LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on Thursday that the use of chemical weapons “by anyone, anywhere, for any purposes was unacceptable”, the prime minister’s office said.

“The prime minister noted that the use of a nerve agent against Yulia and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury was a grave attack on the sovereign territory of the UK, and the first use of nerve agents on European soil since the Second World War,” a spokeswoman said in a statement.

On Syria, the spokeswoman said May had told Xi that “Russia’s blocking of diplomatic action underlined the importance of the international community working together to re-establish an independent mechanism that attributes responsibility to the perpetrators of attacks such as the one in Douma.”