(Adds Ischinger, details)
BERLIN, Sept 3 (Reuters) - A European response that involves
the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is needed against Russia after
the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny with a
Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent, some politicians and
diplomats in Germany said on Thursday.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she expected Moscow to join
efforts to clear up what happened and that Germany would consult
its NATO allies about how to respond, raising the prospect of
new Western sanctions on Russia.
"There must be a European response," Norbert Roettgen, head
of Germany's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told
Deutschlandfunk radio on Thursday, when asked whether work on
the NordStream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany should stop.
"We must pursue hard politics, we must respond with the only
language (Russian President Vladimir) Putin understands - that
is gas sales," said Roettgen, a member of Merkel's ruling
conservatives.
Navalny is lying in intensive care in a hospital in Berlin
after his flight was arranged by activists. A German military
laboratory produced "unequivocal evidence" that he had been
poisoned with Novichok, the government said on Wednesday.
Moscow has denied involvement in the poisoning of Navalny, a
longtime critic of Putin's rule, and the Russian foreign
ministry said Germany's assertion was not backed by evidence.
Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security
Conference and a former ambassador to Washington, backed a joint
response from the EU and NATO and said softer gestures, such as
the expulsions of diplomats, may not suffice.
"If we want to send a clear message to Moscow with our
partners, then economic relations must be on the agenda and that
means the NordStream 2 project must not be left out," said
Ischinger, adding that a full boycott would not be a good move.
"We can't put up a wall between the West and Russia, that
would be a step too far, but there is a middle ground, something
between diplomatic gestures and total boycott," said Ischinger.
(Reporting by Thomas Seythal and Madeline Chambers
Editing by Gareth Jones)
