MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. Russia calls on UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to bring the United States to responsibility for violating international law in the case of the seizure of Russian diplomatic property in the State of New York, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
"We hear statements that the Secretary General is worried over the situation and is contacting the host country unofficially in a bid to find a mutually acceptable solutions but nothing is being done actually yet," she said. "In this situation, we call on Mr. Guterres, as a guarantor of the 1947 agreement [between the United States and the United Nations] to take urgent practical steps to launch an official arbitration procedure against the United States."
According to Zakharova, the United States is violating its liabilities under the agreement of the UN central institutions and is hampering the work of several delegations. "Since 2017, this problem has been addressed to by the UN Committee on Relations with the Host Country and by the General Assembly. Year after year, its resolutions call on the UN Secretary General to use the arbitration tribunal against the United States, to use this mechanism in order to call the United States to responsibility for violating its liabilities to the UN member nations and the United Nations itself," she explained.
The Russian diplomat recalled that another such resolution was passed by the UN General Assembly this December. "In terms of the procedure, the litigation is to be initiated by Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General. And he has all the competences for that," Zakharova added.
Earlier, Russia’s representative, Sergey Leonidchenko, said at a meeting of the UN General Assembly Committee on Relations with the Host Country that Russian diplomats working at the United Nations have problems with obtaining US entry visas. He called on the UN Secretary General to use a special arbitration mechanism to settle this matter.