WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th October, 2019) The United States hopes the question of visas will not affect the work of the UN General Assembly's First Committee and Russia needs to address any issue pertaining to obtaining visas through the host country committee mechanism, US Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament Robert Wood told reporters on Monday.
"Russia has been trying in essence to hold up the convening of the First Committee on matters of substance because of this visa issue and we made it very clear that the host country committee is the mechanism for dealing with all sorts of visa matters," Wood said. "My hope is that Russia will use that mechanism and that we don't let this issue impact the important work that we have to do at First Committee."
Wood said visa-related issues have cropped up over the years, but Russia is bringing the matter into the multilateral context.
"We are hopeful that we can come to some resolution on this and that we can go forward and deal with the agenda that we have in spirit and also agenda of the First Committee," Wood said.
On Thursday, Russia's Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy proposed to shift the location of the First Committee - which deals with questions of disarmament and international security - from New York to Vienna or Geneva, citing obstacles Russian diplomats have faced when trying to obtain US visas.
According to Polyianskiy, the US authorities had not issued visas to some of the Russian experts who planned to travel to New York to take part in the First Committee's session this year.
On Friday, United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a press briefing that UN member states should decide if there is a need to relocate the UN General Assembly First Committee from New York to another city amid the refusal by US officials to promptly issue visas to Russian diplomats.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in September that Russia may resort to advocating for the relocation of the UN headquarters, currently located in New York City, amid the United States' refusal to grant visas to ten members of the Russian delegation for the UN General Assembly's high-level week.
The United States did not issue visas for several members of the Russian delegation, citing technical difficulties as the reason.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has slammed the United States for describing the situation as a technical problem, arguing that Russian delegates met all the deadlines for sending the necessary documents to obtain visas.
