Russia's chief sanitary inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, has accused the U.S. of producing biological weapons in Georgia and said they posed a threat to Russia.
A U.S. Navy laboratory located on the premises of a former Soviet military base on the outskirts of Tbilisi is engaged in activities that violate the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, threaten Russia and will harm economic cooperation, Onishchenko told Interfax on Saturday.
He said Russia might need to respond by limiting imports of Georgian wine.
But Amiran Gamkrelidze, head of the Georgia National Center for Disease Control and Public Health, a joint U.S.-Georgian organization, called Onishchenko's accusations "absurd," adding that after Onishchenko's declaration Russian experts visited the laboratory and "remained pleased" with its work.
