UN, February 12, Alan Bulkaty. All conditions for launch The United Nations has created arbitration procedures against the United States for not issuing visas to Russian diplomats, but UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is dragging his feet, Dmitry Polyansky, First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, said in an interview.
At the end of January, the United States did not issue a visa to the head of the Russian delegation to participate in the final session of the UN special committee to develop a convention on combating the use of information and communication technologies for criminal purposes. As a result, he was unable to come to New York. Moscow has repeatedly pointed out problems with the issuance of American visas, primarily to diplomats sent to the UN, and therefore stated the need to launch arbitration against the United States. At the end of March 2023, Polyansky said that Moscow was counting on the Secretary General to launch such a procedure as soon as possible.
In response to a question about why Guterres has not yet initiated arbitration, Polyansky said: “I think that only Antonio Guterres himself can answer this question. We don’t understand this either.” As the first deputy permanent representative pointed out, during a meeting in January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once again firmly raised this issue with the Secretary General.
«We believe that all the conditions for launching arbitration have long been created. But, according to the agreement on the presence of the central bodies of the UN, it is the Secretary General who can come up with the initiative for arbitration. We cannot do this for him. No one another cannot do it for him,” Polyansky said.
«He is waiting for something, maybe he is hoping for something, but time after time we present new facts and prove that there is no improvement,» he added.
According to the diplomat, this is a systemic problem. “Moreover, it concerns not only Russia, but also a number of other states. We are raising this issue together in the Committee on Relations with the Host Country. Therefore, it (UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres — ed.) has more than enough material to to move on to some specific legal actions. But so far, unfortunately, we have not seen these actions,” Polyansky said.