THE HAGUE: Britain accused Russia on Wednesday of breaking the two-decade international ban on chemical weapons at emergency talks into last month’s poisoning with a nerve agent of a former Russian spy, reports AFP.

The accusations came as diplomats from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons met behind closed-doors in The Hague to discuss the case.

Experts from the watchdog last week confirmed the British findings that former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter had been poisoned with a nerve agent.

“We will continue to call out Russia’s reckless and indiscriminate behaviour when it violates the CWC (Chemical Weapons Convention), and when it threatens global security,” British ambassador Peter Wilson said.

“Russia has a proven record of conducting state-sponsored assassination,” he claimed, according to a tweet from the British delegation to the OPCW. “It is highly likely that the Russian intelligence services view at least some of its defectors as legitimate targets for assassination,” Wilson said. It was the second meeting of the Hague-based body’s executive council in three days, and was called by Britain to discuss the probe into the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter last month in the British town of Salisbury.