MOSCOW. Aug 23 (Interfax) - The U.S. has stopped looking for reasonable grounds for introducing anti-Russian sanctions, State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Leonid Slutsky told reporters on Friday.
"The second package of U.S. sanctions in light of the Skripals case is yet another act as part of the West's most powerful anti-Russian provocation. [...] New restrictions are essentially overlapping the existing anti-Russian restrictive measures. The pretext is absurd: violations in the area of chemical disarmament," Slutsky said. The new package of sanctions is based on suspicions regarding chemical weapons, the type of weaponry that Russia eliminated in 2017, he said.
Under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Russia has fulfilled all its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, having completely disposed of all chemical weapon supplies on its territory back in 2017, as opposed to the U.S., which only declares that will finish the disposal process by 2023, Slutsky said.
"But as a condition for lifting of the sanctions, they require that we provide Congress with proof that Russia will not attempt to use chemical weapons. Where's the logic? But neither Capitol Hill nor the White House need any logic, although it is obvious that President Trump is being subjected to certain pressure from the Russophobic lobby, especially in Congress," he said.
"The sanctions baton" has turned into one of Washington's main instruments in promoting its own interest in global markets, Slutsky said. "These are dirty and unfair competition methods. Regrettably, all of this only widens the gap in the Russia-U.S. dialogue," he said.
Britain's Scotland Yard recently had to admit its failure to find any hard evidence that the Russian side had been involved in the so-called poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Slutsky said.
The U.S. has introduced more than 70 anti-Russian sanctions since 2014, he said.
Media reported earlier that the U.S. Department of State had distributed a notification about the second package of sanctions over the Skripals case taking effect from August 26.