Russian FM Lavrov Raises Issue of UN HQ Location After UNGA Visa Scandal
…from Sputnik News, Moscow
[ Editor’s Note: The US snub of denying official Russian UN representatives visas for attending pertinent topic meetings during this session has continued the self-denigration of the US in the world’s eye.
Being the host of the UN requires impeccable good manners, which seems to be in short supply inside the Trump regime, and an indication that the Russians are not the close buddies with Mr. Trump as many suggest.
If the US cannot be an unbiased UN host then, it is time for it to step aside and let a new candidate take over. Heaven knows there are many who would love to be host. I wonder if anyone took a look at the original agreement to see what hosting obligations the US was contracting to provide, or was it one of those “we paid for it so we run it our way”.
Was this just another step in the unipolar power’s march across the planet carrying a big stick like Teddy Roosevelt? If there are any boundaries that the US would accept I can’t see them any more.
We have a growing trend that there is no agreement that the US would not consider breaking, if it wanted to for some reason. Maybe when the US signs new agreements, an addendum should be required to show all the ones it has broken and then a release for the cosigners all stating that they are aware but still would like to co-sign… Jim W. Dean ]
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– First published … September 25, 2019 –
In light of a US refusal to issue visas to a part of the Russian delegation traveling to participate in various activities of the UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that the time had come to raise the question of the location of the UN headquarters.
“When a visa was not issued to the head of the relevant Non-Proliferation and Arms Control department, who was supposed to go to a meeting of the UN Disarmament Commission in April this year, we formally proposed not to hold a Commission session in the United States, if all delegations were not entitled to send the person who is considered necessary to promote their positions and defend their interests.
Now, apparently, we will have to raise the question of what to do with the UN headquarters”, Lavrov said in an interview with Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
Lavrov promised that Moscow would respond harshly to Washington’s refusal to issue visas for part of the Russian delegation traveling to the UN General Assembly.
“Of course, we will react harshly, try to respond. Such rudeness cannot be tolerated”, Lavrov said, adding that the Russian side “will figure out how to answer” as Americans also travel to Russia.
Notably, the head of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, was on the list of those denied an entry visa into the US.
“Visas were denied to ten of our employees. This is only from the Foreign Ministry. They also denied visas to [Russian lawmakers] Leonid Slutsky and Konstantin Kosachev, who traveled to the United States many times, as well as to Dmitry Rogozin, who wanted to take part in events dedicated to cooperation in space exploration”, Lavrov said.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov thanked his Japanese counterpart, Toshimitsu Motegi, for his help in getting a US visa for the Russian UNGA delegation’s interpreter.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that several members of the Russian delegation did not receive visas to participate in the high-level week of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, which runs from September 24-30 in New York.
In total, 10 members of the delegation did not receive their visas, including senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev and the head of the Russian State Parliament’s International Affairs Committee, Leonid Slutsky.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the situation demanded a tough reaction from Moscow and the United Nations, adding that the visa refusal was a direct violation of Washington’s international obligations.
The 1947 Headquarters Agreement between the United Nations and the United States regulates the accessibility of the UN seat to non-US citizens, among other provisions.
Moscow Working With US Lawyers on Lawsuit Over Russian Diplomatic Property
Lavrov has called the situation with seized Russian diplomatic property in the United States “highway robbery” and said that the Russian side was working with US lawyers and was preparing this case for court hearings.
“We have arguments, and not a few. We are working with US lawyers. We will continue to prepare this case for court hearings. US justice and legal proceedings are a very bureaucratic thing, it requires calculation of all the options”, he told the Kommersant newspaper in an interview.
The situation with property is a “highway robbery”, the minister stressed, adding that Russian diplomats have advanced Moscow’s position in the UN Committee on Relations with the Host Country.
“The Americans […] do not want to resolve this situation, which is, obviously, unlawful and violates all conceivable conventions”, he said.
In December 2016, Washington expelled 35 Russian diplomats and blocked access to two Russian diplomatic compounds in response to Russia’s alleged meddling in the US presidential election, which Moscow has consistently denied.
In September 2017, the United States shut down Russia’s Consulate General in San Francisco and trade missions in New York City and Washington DC. US officials said the move came in response to Moscow’s decision in late July to reduce the number of US diplomatic staff in Russia to 455 people, the same number of diplomatic personnel Russia has in the United States.
After Russian diplomats left the diplomatic compounds, US security agents entered the premises to conduct searches. Moscow said that the actions of the United States constituted a violation of international law, including the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic and Consular Relations.
US Demands on INF Treaty ‘Boorish’
Lavrov also told the Russian-based media outlet that Washington’s demands – with regard to the destruction of all missiles that allegedly violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – are “boorish”.
“We invited the Americans to show them this missile, offered to conduct a special briefing for them. But they categorically refused the invitation. The US will be satisfied only by the complete destruction of missiles, launchers and all associated equipment under US monitoring. This is a rather boorish position”, Lavrov said.
“And not only did they refuse to come to the testing range to have a look at this missile – they forbade their NATO allies to go there”, the minister stressed.
According to Lavrov, all this was done to accuse Russia of violating the INF Treaty and ensure the collapse of the agreement.
The INF Treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987, was terminated on 2 August at the US initiative after the country formally suspended its INF obligations six months earlier.
Both the United States and Russia have repeatedly accused each other of violating the deal, which required the signatories to eliminate and permanently forswear all of their ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,417 miles).
Belarus Refusal to Host Russian Military Base ‘Unpleasant Episode’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also commented on the issue of a Russian military base in Belarus.
“This is really an unpleasant episode. But the main thing is not the form, but the content. And as for the content, the President of Belarus Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko has repeatedly said, including answering the question about the base, that Belarus is Russia’s 100-percent ally and that the Belarusian armed forces need to be viewed as protecting our common interests and our common territory”, Lavrov said in an interview with Kommersant.
Moscow and Minsk have been discussing the possibility of deploying a Russian airbase in Belarus for a long time. But in October 2015, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stated that neither Minsk nor Moscow needed the deployment of a Russian airbase from a military point of view, and called the media hype “political”.
In 2018, Lukashenko said that he saw no need for a Russian military base in the country as Minsk could ensure its own security within a military and political alliance with Russia. However, the Belarusian president stressed that Minsk would need new weapons, including missiles, in case NATO boosts its activities in the Eastern flank and the United States sets up a US military base in Poland.
Warsaw is currently seeking to build up a permanent US military presence in Poland. At a September 2018 meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda, US President Donald Trump said that his administration was considering establishing a base in Poland.
Trump also stated that Warsaw had agreed to pay more than $2 billion toward the cost of the base. The Polish president, in turn, humorously suggested that the base be called Fort Trump.
Resumption of Russia-Georgia Flights
Lavrov said that he supported the idea of resuming flights between Russia and Georgia, as the Georgian people were coming to understand that the provocation against Moscow was pointless.
“I would like the flights to be resumed. I think that would be a right move after the majority of Georgians had understood that the provocation, staged in the Georgian parliament during the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, had been counterproductive”, Lavrov said.
Violent protests erupted in Tbilisi on 20 June after a Russian lawmaker took the speaker’s seat to address an international parliamentary forum on Orthodoxy in Georgia’s legislature.
The unrest subsequently grew into an opposition rally, with activists demanding that the Russian delegation leave the parliament and calling for resignation of several Georgian officials. The clashes left 240 people injured and over 300 more detained.
Russia suspended direct flights to and from Georgia indefinitely starting 8 July over security concerns after a wave of anti-Russian protests in Tbilisi.
Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus. He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews. He now writes and posts periodically for VT.
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Athens would be nice, as a cradle of democracy.
I’m pretty sure the Chicken-hawks here in the States could go with Sparta!
The US and a few of it’s buddies, have made the UN, just another broken, dysfunctional institution. Finding another country for it to call home, with a geopolitical landscape that changes faster than the weather, would be a challenge and is unnecessary. The internet can be it’s home, with servers in multiple locations. It’s business would be transparent and available to much of the world’s population. If we can’t have a free country, maybe the Founding Father’s plan will take root somewhere else. The UN building could be turned into apartments for homeless immigrants. Pre indoctrinated left wing democrats of course.
ADDENDUM Re Åland as New UN HQ:
Oh, by the way. The dastardly difficult Finnish language is outlawed from being used officially on the Åland islands. Just Scandinavian (Swedish) and English signs.
Trivia Note:The “Elvish language(s) that J.R.R.Tolkien wrote is actually Finnish. Also he lifted some ideas from an oral traditional story that is spoken to the accompaniment of a Finnish musical instrument (something like a small lute).
IF we were to be rational. the BEST PLACE IN EUROPE to relocate to should be a local area that is de-militarized. The Finnish ÅLAND Archipelago (Åland is the Swedish name, Finnish is Ahvenanmaa, «åborlandet», which means ‘perch-fish country’). The capital of this Finnish county is Mariehamn.
They have been de-militarized thru international treaty for a long long time. The ålanders cannot be requred to be drafted into Finland’s armed forces (albeit they may volonteer). Åland/Ahvananmaa is not a EU member (as are neither the Danish semi-autonomous Greenland and the Faroe Islands). And booze and tobacco are dirt cheap by Nordic standards.
Diplomats could as well live in Åbo/Tùrku and Hèlsinki/Helsingfórs on the Finnish mainland, in Swedish Stockholm or in Estonian Tàllinn/Réwal — all reachable within an hour by speedboat or hydrofoil ferries.
And protected from US aggression assured by the Russian Baltic fleets of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad/Königsberg.
Moving UN from US to for example some like Five eyes club country or EU and NATO banker country will not change anything. It will be like moving NBA All Star to Toronto.
Where should UN be? UN is a successful neocolonial angloamerican imperialist tool that evolved from United K and United S into United N (the analogy is obvious) and should not infect other countries as such. UN is a useless organization, until there is at least one such and independent organization per continent, dettached from all and any NATO maneuvers, and not following north Atlantic UNSC council and stop hosting false humanitarians Hollywood based propaganda. US host so many World roof organizations because such are excellent god-like tools for spreading propaganda.
If the UN were only a tool of GB & US of A, then maybe relocate to Trump’s golf coarses in the Scottish Highlands. A few stray balls and some golf club jabbing in their heads were just added perks to to boost their IQ scores…
Seems like it’s Trump that has his shoe off banging it on the table next to the microphone.
“The United Nations Security Council “veto power” refers to the power of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States) to veto any “substantive” resolution. A permanent member’s abstention or absence does not prevent a draft resolution from being adopted.” The only amazing thing is that the virtually impotent UN can conduct any meaningful business at all with these outrageous veto powers. I have more respect for Russian Minister Lavrov than any of the thugs in the U.S. How could a decision be made to make any changes for the UN with these outrageous restrictions? Many people in the U.S. want it out of the UN anyway so grant them their wishes. The only ones in the US who want the UN are the you know who in New York who profit from the money spent there. Otherwise the UN is virtually without guts and without power and is worthless in solving any world problems just as the former League of Nations was. It is nothing but a place for letting off steam. What value is it when thugs like the U.S. can do as they please without any practical controls. The lying lawyers have ruined everything as usual.
IS there such a place to transfer the UN? Doubtful. As for what to do with the empty building, I seem to remember in Heavy Metal that it was converted to low rent housing. How appropriate.
UN relocation seems irrelevant. The US bears the biggest burden paying for it, so they rightfully believe they own the organization. As for the Russians fuming, haven’t they learned anything so far? This is just one, in a neverending series of insults, they’ve been lavished upon. All of this useless jabber brings me to the point. Heavy Metal. The good old days. Thank you for reminding me.
I recommend Brussels Belgium, before the patriots burn it down to the ground.
Good observe, Mr.Dean. Can we trust USA now? Alas, but no… They demand the truth and to be sincere from American citizens, but act as liars and crooks in the world. They act like naughty kids. Or true gentleman – a master of his words: he may give his word and take it back. Really nasty to realize it, but US political establishment became a synonim of LIE: a wide world known brand.
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