Russia has called for a UN Security Council meeting to discuss purported US-backed biological weapons programs in Ukraine.Photo:VCG

When Russia, China and other countries expressed their concerns over US biological activities in countries including Ukraine at a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, the US did not show up, which in some Chinese experts' eyes, was out of the US' "guilty conscience" over the issue.

At the UN Security Council Arria Formula Meeting on Biological Security on Wednesday, Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, said Washington is creating biological laboratories in different countries and connecting them to a unified system. In territories bordering Russia and China alone, about 60 facilities have been modernized since 2005 with funding from the US military, he said. Kirillov noted that the US has spent more than $5 billion on military biological programs since 2005.

The Ukrainian network of laboratories is designed to conduct research and monitor the biological situation consisting of 30 facilities in 14 populated locations, Kirillov said, noting especially valuable materials from Ukrainian biological laboratories were exported to the US in early February, and the rest should be destroyed, TASS reported. 

Dai Bing, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, said at the meeting that China firmly opposes the development, stockpiling or use of biological and chemical weapons by any country under any circumstances, and the Russian Federation has published a number of documents related to the biological military activities of the US, which has caused great concern from the international community. 

China welcomes the international community to assess the discovered documents within appropriate frameworks including the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the UN, and hear the clarifications from the relevant country in a fair and impartial manner. The relevant country should take a responsible approach and offer timely and comprehensive clarifications on its biological activities to remove the doubts of the international community, Dai said. 

According to the TASS report, diplomats from Brazil, Venezuela, Belarus and other countries also spoke at the meeting, but US and UK representatives did not show up. 

"This is evidence of their real attitude to this problem--the fact that they have something to hide and   do not want to answer the uncomfortable questions posed today," Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky said, TASS reported. 

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times that the US did not attend the meeting out of "guilty conscience," and the US did not want to make public its biological activities but covered its hidden agenda with "commercial secrets." 

The US kept setting up biological laboratories around rival countries with the goal of developing targeted viral weapons against those countries, Song said. 

The US insists on developing weapons of mass destruction to seek hegemony, which is a gross violation of the BWC and an assault on human civilization, he said. 

Wang Yiwei, director of the institute of international affairs at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that the US attacks voices from Russia as disinformation and attempts to use its resources to shut off Russia's voices, and amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US believes that Russia was trying to use the biological lab issue to rewrite the story of its military operation in Ukraine.  

No matter it's for stirring up a color revolution or conducting biological activities in Ukraine, the US' purpose is to create confrontations and division to slow down its decline, Wang said.  

Facing growing concerns, the responses from Washington have made the international community more concerned. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said the US has "biological research facilities" in Ukraine. But the US Department of State said Russia's claims of US bio-weapons activities in Ukraine were "outright lies." 

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the US should share comprehensive information on bio-labs in Ukraine. 

During this week's Preparatory Committee for the Ninth Review Conference of the BWC, the US cited "revisionist history" to describe the international community's criticism over its opposition to the establishment of a verification mechanism of the BWC, Zhao Lijian, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said at Thursday's media briefing, noting that the US' remarks are "shocking." 

He said what the US wants is to arbitrarily accuse others of violating the convention and demand verification with "the presumption of guilt", while refusing to accept any supervision and verification of its own compliance. 

This lies at the heart of the US' sole opposition to a verification mechanism, Zhao said.