By David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis
May 26 (Reuters) – Russia’s U.N. ambassador said on Tuesday that the United States 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 as host of the U.N.
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.
A U.N. diplomat said Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi had also apparently been denied a visa to attend the same meeting. The main topic of the meeting was upholding the U.N. charter and strengthening multilateral cooperation.
The State Department as well as the U.S. and Iranian missions to the U.N. did not immediately respond to requests for comment. China’s mission said it had no information about visa issues.
Nebenzia said Alimov, who oversees matters related to the United Nations, was invited by Wang and called it “an egregious instance of disrespect” for China’s U.N. presidency, especially when the topic under discussion was the U.N. charter.
“Despite all of our attempts to persuade the U.S. side to issue a visa to him, that visa was ultimately not granted,” he said.
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.”
U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq told a U.N. news briefing: “We expect the host country to issue visas to all of those who need to participate in the activities of the United Nations at our headquarters here.”
Araqchi was not in New York and would not meet with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday as scheduled, Haq said, adding he did not know the reason.
Iran said on Tuesday the United States had violated the ceasefire in their war after the U.S. conducted what it called defensive strikes in southern Iran.
Wang told reporters he hoped parties in the conflict could stay committed to the ceasefire and meet each other halfway.
Nebenzia said the U.N. 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 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 instability and conflict, warning that “a giant ship of global civilization is sailing into dangerous waters.”
Guterres told the meeting the world now faced the highest number of conflicts since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, and “new and uncharted risks to peace and security.”
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Jonathan Landay and Simon Lewis; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Chizu Nomiyama, Sanjeev Miglani and Cynthia Osterman)
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