U.S. Ambassador to Georgia insists that laboratory in Tbilisi is not military

Created with help of US funding, the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Centre (the Central Referral Laboratory of Public Health) in Tbilisi is open and has no military purpose, U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard Norland said today.

The head of Rospotrebnadzor ,Gennady Onishchenko, claimed earlier that the Microbiology Laboratory of the U.S. Navy, which is not under the control of the Georgian authorities, continues to work in Tbilisi. He also said that African swine fever, which caused a loss of livestock in Russian regions, came to Russia from Georgia. In response, the Special Envoy of the Prime Minister of Georgia for the normalization of relations with Russia, Zurab Abashidze, said he did not see a connection between the Georgian biological laboratories and African swine fever in Russia.

Adapted from Vestnik Kavkaza