WASHINGTON, March 14. /TASS/. Beijing hopes for an unbiased independent investigation of the case over the poisoning of the former colonel of Russian military intelligence service, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia and trusts that it will operate solid facts, the Chinese Ambassador to the UN, Ma Zhaoxu said on Wednesday at a meeting of the UN Security Council.

He also said China hoped the investigation would comply with the norms of international law.

Ambassador Ma also expressed the hope the parties concerned would have an ability to settle the situation.

His statement was made at Wednesday’s meeting of the UN Security Council that discussed the bizarre incident in the UK involving the former Russian colonel and British spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

Russia’s Federal Security Service [FSB] arrested Sergei Skripal, a colonel of the GRU military intelligence service, on charges of espionage for the UK in 2004. A military court sentenced him to thirteen years in prison in 2006.

In 2010, Skripal happened to be one of a small group of sentenced spies whom the Russian authorities swapped for ten individuals accused of espionage in the US.

On March 4, 2018, Sergei, 66 at present, and his daughter Yulia, 33, who lived in Moscow and who had come to the UKthe day before, underwent an impact of a nerve agent. Passersby found them sitting unconscious on a bench near a shopping mall in Salisbury. They were taken to hospital where they have stayed ever since, with physicians describing their condition as critical.

Theresa May claimed later they had undergone the impact of a weapons grade agent Novichok, designed in the early 1970’s in the former Soviet Union.

Amid a powerfully orchestrated media hysteria and following a refusal by the British authorities to send a sample of the substance detected in Salisbury to Moscow for analysis, the British PM made public a list of ‘response measures’ on March 14. The ‘package’ includes an expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats, an asset freeze and the cancellation of all top-level and high-level contacts.

May also mentioned other possible measures, which she ostensibly could not specify owing to security considerations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia had nothing to do with the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal and he indicated that Theresa May and her government was striving to mislead the global public opinion.

Various Russian officials, experts and MPs have called on the UK authorities to release data on the case and to hand the information to Russia in line with the internationally established official procedures.