UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th September, 2022) The only way to solve the problem of non-issuance of US visas to Russian diplomats is to launch an arbitration procedure by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Sergey Leonidchenko, the head of the legal reference office of the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, said on Tuesday.
Leonidchenko told a UN meeting that it was obvious that the only real solution to the problems with the systematic conscious failure of the United States to fulfill its international legal obligations was the immediate launch of the arbitration procedure by the UN Secretary General under section 21 of the UN headquarters agreement, adding that anything else will only be an imitation of the solution amid the continuing degradation of the situation.
The Russian delegation has not yet received the US visas to participate in the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the diplomat also said.
On September 6, UN secretary-general's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that Guterres raised the issue of US issuing visas to Russian delegations to participate in UN events with a number of US senior officials.
This is not the first scandal involving US reluctance to issue visas to Russian officials and diplomats this year: in July, Washington refused to grant a visa to Director of the Department of International Information Security of the Russian Foreign Ministry Andrei Krutskikh. Moscow has repeatedly called on the UN Secretariat to resolve the issue, demanding that the US stop hindering Russian diplomats from taking part in international events.
The UNGA 77, which will run from September 13-27 with high-level debate set to begin on September 20, marks the first in-person gathering of the body since the pandemic began.
