Moscow can provide UN peacekeeping missions with additional personnel from its Russian Interior Ministry pool at any time, Pyotr Popov, chief of the ministry's Administration for International Cooperation, told Sputnik on Monday
UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th June, 2019) Moscow can provide UN peacekeeping missions with additional personnel from its Russian Interior Ministry pool at any time, Pyotr Popov, chief of the ministry's Administration for International Cooperation, told Sputnik on Monday.
"We always have a pool of peacekeepers, whose information is available to the UN Secretariat � it is about 20-25 specific people who are ready to join [any UN] mission at any time ... However, this pool is not used by the United Nations for some reason ... We have repeatedly raised these issues with the UN secretariat's leadership, but there was no specific [answer], meanwhile, we are ready to increase our [UN] contingent based on the needs," he said.
Currently, at least 36 Interior Ministry staff members are deployed in six UN missions, including those in Cyprus, Haiti, Kosovo and South Sudan, he added.
Speaking about bilateral cooperation between law enforcement in Russia and the United States, Popov said that direct contacts were more efficient than collaboration at the level of Interpol.
"We have daily contacts, like phone calls or e-mails. We have no problems in transmitting information, and there is no 'iron curtain,'" he added.
In the meantime, Popov noted that Moscow and Washington did not have a bilateral extradition treaty, a factor that made their joint work difficult.
