Downing Street Says » Russia-COBR

When asked how important or unimportant in the grand scheme of things was the ongoing saga of the Russian man, as there was a Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) meeting this afternoon, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) replied that with regards to the COBR meeting, as he had said yesterday, COBR met because this was a cross-departmental issue. There were health concerns, as well as Home Office concerns too, and therefore, people should not read anything more than COBR being a sensible bureaucratic mechanism for discussing these matters. COBR played an important role, but it should not be overstated, although the PMOS said that he knew how over-excited the journalists got by COBR.

With regards to the investigation, what we were determined to do was let the investigation proceed. As the PMOS had also said yesterday, we would work on the basis of facts, not speculation, and whilst that might be frustrating for everyone concerned, that was the way in which we must proceed. What the police had indicated, and we would obviously concur, was that this was a very difficult case, and everybody needed to be patient and let the police do their job. People also needed to support the Health Protection Agency (HPA) and the other agencies whilst they took the precautionary measures which were necessary.

Asked if we had stable relations with Russia, the PMOS said that we had not shirked from expressing our concerns about certain aspects of human rights in Russia, as we had done on many occasions, including the media’s ability to operate etc. At the same time, however, in this particular case, we had to divorce that general statement from how we dealt with this, i.e. we had to deal with it in the same way that we would deal with any other police investigation. At the same time, we had to recognise that with this case, the police were confronted with a very complex set of circumstances to investigate. The PMOS said that the best thing we could do was give the police the time and space to investigate the case, and then draw whatever conclusions we needed to draw.

Asked further about the relations, the PMOS said that we respected absolutely that statements from the family had been made, but we had to proceed on the basis of firm evidence, as we would with every other case. Speculation was inevitable in this kind of case, but we had to proceed on the basis of evidence.

Asked if there were any plans to speak to President Putin, the PMOS said that there were no plans at this stage. The PMOS said again that this should be taken step-by-step. The first duty was to establish the facts, and then to think about any implications of those facts. In general, we had given our views to Russia on many occasions, and those had not changed, but in particular, we had to proceed on the basis of fact, not speculation.

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» Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Russia-COBR

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