The UN intends to use an arbitration tribunal against the US
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for the use of an arbitration tribunal against the United States for Washington's violation of its obligations to the organization.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova spoke about this during a briefing, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“The states have been pursuing a deliberate course for several years to create serious obstacles to the work of a number of delegations to the UN, abusing the status of the UN host state, and violating international legal obligations under the agreements on the UN headquarters of 1947. The United States systematically does not issue, delays the issuance, or does not promptly extend visas to representatives of states and secretariat employees solely based on the criterion of their citizenship,” Zakharova said.
“Diplomats and secretariat employees, and we are not just talking about Russian citizens, are still bound by such a discriminatory measure as restricting movement around the country by the so-called 25-mile zone around the center of New York,” Zakharova added.
She recalled that in 2016, the US State Department blocked access to the premises of the permanent mission of Russia to the UN - even despite the fact that the premises were acquired back in 1953, and since that time there have been no complaints or comments, and the diplomatic status was officially recognized by the United States .
“Now diplomatic property in New York State, used for representative purposes, has actually been seized by the Americans. Since 2017, this problem has been considered by the UN Special Committee on Relations with the Host Country, and directly by the General Assembly. And in its resolutions every year there are more and more demanding calls for the UN Secretary General to use an arbitration tribunal against the United States,” says the diplomat.
“Through this mechanism, it was necessary to hold the United States accountable for violating obligations to member states and the organization itself. The next such resolution of the General Assembly was approved in December of this year. The initiator should be UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, he has all the powers for this,” added the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
According to her, the Secretary General gets off with statements about his “concern about the situation” and “informal interaction with the United States in search of a mutually acceptable solution,” but there is still no real action.
“It is required of Mr. Gutierres that he, as the guarantor of the 1947 agreements, immediately take steps to officially launch the arbitration procedure against the United States,” Zakharova concluded.
The UN intends to use an arbitration tribunal against the United States.