UNITED NATIONS, January 6. /TASS/. The United States misuses the platform of the UN Security Council and undermines its authority as the main body responsible for maintaining international peace, Russia’s UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya said at a meeting of the Security Council’s meeting on protests in Iran on Friday.
"Regrettably, today we are witnesses again to how the United States misuses the platform of the UN Security Council," he said. "Why does the US, a permanent member of the Security Council and one of the co-authors of the UN Charter, undermine the authority of the UN Security Council as the main body responsible for maintaining international peace and security? It is clear to one and all that the proposed theme for discussion does not correlate with Security Council’s prerogatives."
He warned that by calling such meetings the US "wastes the Security Council’s energy.""Instead of focusing on the solution of acute crises in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, North Korea and Africa you suggest meddling in the internal affairs of other states. We do not want to be accomplices to destabilization in Iran or elsewhere," Nebenzya said. He urged all counterparts in the UN Security Council to "discuss in detail the Middle East settlement, including the Palestinian issue."
"If your logic is to be followed, Security Council meetings should have been called after the well-known events in Ferguson, Missouri, or when violence was used against Occupy Wall Street demonstrations on Manhattan," Nebenzya told the United States’ UN ambassador Nikki Haley. "Or, possibly, let us call a UN Security Council meeting when a tide of demonstrations sweeps some Western country?"
Iran consolidates itself on platform of anti-US sentiment
Nebenzya recalled that Russia had drawn attention more than once to the fact "far-fetched excuses" were used for including purely internal political affairs in the agenda of UN Security Council meetings.
"Why has the United States resorted to such a move today, when the internal political situation in Iran has normalized?" he asked. Russia’s UN envoy believes that oddly enough words of thanks for Iran’s return to stability should be addressed to Washington, because to a large extent its own promises of "great support" for the people of Iran "caused Iranian society to consolidate on the platform of anti-US sentiment."
"One has the impression that unexplainably irrational allergy to that country has a blind-folding effect in evaluating the events there and results in wishful thinking," Nebenzya said. He expressed the certainty that the real purpose behind the motion to convene the meeting on Iran was a "camouflaged attempt to use the current events for pushing ahead with efforts to undermine the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for a settlement over the Iranian nuclear program."
Anti-government demonstrations began in Iran on December 28, 2017 over price hikes and a string of bankruptcies. Street clashes claimed the lives of 45 protesters, police and police support personnel. According to the Iranian authorities, more than 450 rioters have been arrested and will stand trial soon.
Nebenzya told the UN Security Council Russia regretted the loss of human life "as a result of demonstrations that were not peaceful at all," but at the same time called for "letting Iran settle internal problems on its own.".