MOSOCW. Aug 24 (Interfax) - Moscow has denied the claim of the United States Department of State's spokesperson Heather Nauert that State Secretary Mike Pompeo asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by phone to support the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' (OPCW) attempts to hold Damascus responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
"Yet again, we have to point out the American side's loose interpretation of the contents of communications between high-ranking Russian and U.S. representatives. Nauert's remarks are untrue, Pompeo made no such request," the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement on the ministry's website.
"We see this distorted synopsis of the conversation between the Russian and U.S. foreign-policy heads as an attempt by Washington to use bilateral dialogue on the Syrian conflict to advance its own political agenda, both on Syria and more broadly within the OPCW," the spokesperson said.
"We hope that in future the American side will be more careful in commenting on the results of contacts between countries' foreign policy leaders," Zakharova said.
"In this respect, we would like to remind once again of the Russian position on the OPCW resolution pushed through by the U.S. and its allies about giving this organization powers to establish the responsible for the use of chemical weapons," she said.
"Russia supports the work of this important international organization, but strictly in accordance with the OPCW's objectives which consist in technical assistance to national programs for the destruction of chemical arsenals," Zakharova said.
"The Convention contains no provisions which would imply a possibility of creating a special attributive mechanism to establish culprits in the use of chemical weapons. We are seeing such actions as undermining the OPCW's fundamental spirit of consensus and jeopardizing the very existence of the global regime of chemical disarmament and nonproliferation," Zakharova said.
Lavrov and Pompeo spoke by telephone yesterday. After that, the State Department said that the conversation focused on Syria in particular. A State Department official said that Pompeo had urged Moscow to support OPCW efforts and assist with holding Damascus responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.