WASHINGTON, May 26 (Reuters) – Russia’s U.N. ambassador said on Tuesday that the U.S. did not grant a visa for Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alimov to attend a U.N. Security Council meeting and called it a breach of U.S. obligations under the U.N. Headquarters Agreement.
Vassily Nebenzia made the comment at a meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council chaired by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi that he said Alimov had intended to attend.
The State Department and the U.S. U.N. mission did not immediately respond to questions about Nebenzia’s statement.
“The Russian delegation … based on the invitation of the Foreign Minister Wang Yi should have been represented during today’s meeting at the level of the Deputy Foreign Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Alexander Alimov, who oversees matters related to the United Nations,” Nebenzia said.
“However, despite all of our attempts to persuade the U.S. side to issue a visa to him, that visa was ultimately not granted,” he added.
Nebenzia said that under the U.N. Headquarters Agreement, access to U.N. headquarters in New York “needs to be provided for all officials of member states, barring none.”
He said Russia also viewed the issue as “an egregious instance of disrespect for the Chinese presidency of the Security Council, and of the topic that is under discussion today, that of the Charter of the United Nations.”
Nebenzia said that charter was under serious strain and accused Western-led countries of using double standards to maintain dominance. He said remilitarization in Germany and Japan were dangerous developments that were threats to global security and undoing the results of World War Two.
“The policy of remilitarization is undermining the U.N.-centric international system,” he said.
“Countries that were defeated during the Second World War are seeking plausible pretexts for rewriting its outcomes, and their rhetoric should not mislead anybody. This is a very dangerous trend, which warrants the attention of the entire international community.”
Wang said there was a need to “reinvigorate” the U.N. Charter amid rising global instability and conflict, warning that “a giant ship of global civilization is sailing into dangerous waters.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the meeting the world now faced the highest number of conflicts since the founding of the United Nations at the end of World War Two, and “new and uncharted risks to peace and security.”
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Jonathan Landay and Simon Lewis; Editing by Caitlin Webber , Chizu Nomiyama and Sanjeev Miglani)
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