Russian Foreign Ministry says U.S. increasingly violates UN headquarters agreement

Russian Foreign Ministry: U.S. violations of the UN headquarters agreement are increasing

Russia will seek to start an arbitration procedure against the U.S. because it violates the agreement on the status of the UN headquarters, said Pyotr Ilyichev, director of the department of international organizations of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“The U.S. is indeed causing increasing doubts about the validity of its right to retain its host state status for UN headquarters. Not only have American violations of obligations under the corresponding agreement with the world organization of 1947 not ceased but they are even more frequent. Ilyichev was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying: “We are speaking here about gratuitous non-issuance of visas to delegates for participation in events organized by the United Nations, about restrictions on movements of foreign diplomats working in New York, and even about ‘raiding’ of diplomatic property in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.

Ilyichev quotes RIA Novosti as saying: “Not only Russia but a number of other “unwanted” states become victims of such arbitrariness on the part of Washington, and they, along with the Russian Federation, regularly draw attention to inappropriate behavior of the United States during discussions at the specialized Committee on Relations with the Host Country,” he pointed out.

“For our part, we intend to continue to press UN Secretary General António Guterres to launch an arbitration procedure against the Americans as stipulated in the said 1947 agreement. The Portuguese has the necessary authority to do so, including through the resolutions of the UN General Assembly adopted several years in a row, calling on him to “urgently submit the matter to the most serious consideration” and to “take any appropriate measures” to resolve it,” the diplomat concluded.