UNITED NATIONS, September 8. /TASS/. Washington is deliberately hampering the work of a number of delegations to the United Nations in a bid to score advantages for itself, a high-ranking Russian Foreign Ministry official said on Tuesday.

The visa problems some of the delegations have encountered stem "from Washington’s deliberate negligence of its liabilities as a host nation," Vladimir Yermakov, director of the ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, stated at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly First Committee.

"Washington undertook clear commitments to ensure maximum favorable conditions for United Nations events in New York. But it has been ignoring these commitments for years, blocking the work of many delegations," he claimed.

"The United States enjoys serious advantages in terms of imposing its agenda on the international community," he stressed.

"It cannot be ruled out that the United States had anticipated our reaction to this visa war and unleashed it deliberately. It is hard to interpret the indifference to these matters demonstrated by the receiving side otherwise. It is logical to ask whether it is done intentionally to block the work of the First Committee and avoid discussion of the most pressing international security problems, to which the United States has been unable to offer any positive solution for years," Yermakov noted, adding that Russia is interested in the soonest start of the committee’s substantive work.

Moreover, according to Yermakov, US officials do not seem willing to find a solution to the issue with granting visas to UN delegations. "Judging by the reaction in the past few days, we get the impression that [the USA] does not plan to resolve this issue," the diplomat said. "We can see the necessary response neither on the part of the US nor the UN Secretariat, which needs to facilitate this, nor the Secretary General," he added.

The United States failed to issue entry visas to a third of the members of the Russian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in due time. Moreover, visas were not issued to members of a number of other nations’ delegations either. Commenting on this situation, Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky suggested the venue for the First Committee’s meetings be relocated to Vienna or Geneva.