国际英语新闻:Ruling of NATO-dominated WADA politicized: Russian FM

MOSCOW, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- The anti-Russian ruling of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is politicized, since the agency is dominated by countries from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its allies, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday.

"WADA decisions are made by some 15 people, of which 11 are from NATO member countries, plus Australia and Japan, one African country and one Latin American," he told a meeting of the Federation Council, or upper house of Russia's parliament.

"When all the zeal of the struggle against doping boils down to supporting those who want to restrain Russia by all methods and in all directions, probably, we have a basis for assessing this kind of action as an obvious politicization," he added.

Lavrov said that Russia will monitor the honesty and openness of the discussion of the doping issue at WADA, given the new information provided by the Russian Investigative Committee about falsifications by the former head of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory Grigory Rodchenkov.

On Dec. 9, the WADA Executive Committee decided to deprive Russian athletes of four years of the opportunity to compete at the Olympic Games and World Championships under the Russian flag and also ban international championships in Russia for the period.

The Russian athletes were sanctioned because of alleged fraud concerning the database of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory.

On Saturday, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement that it had obtained evidence that Rodchenkov, who fled to the United States in 2015, and certain unidentified people remotely tampered with the database.