MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. Russia would prefer that the UN headquarters be moved to a more neutral place, such as Geneva or Vienna, Pyotr Ilychev, the director of the department for international organizations at the Russian Foreign Ministry, told TASS on Monday.

"We, of course, would prefer that it [the UN headquarters] be moved to a more neutral location, Geneva or Vienna, but many member countries don’t want to leave New York. There are a lot of reasons for this, including that they already have the real estate, it’s hard for them to have two offices, so they have everything in New York. These are rather reasons of financial and economic nature," he said.

"We are thinking about it. Firstly, it’s a shorter trip, and secondly, the Austrians and the Swiss are more neutral, even despite what they are doing now. But we have not found support from the majority of member countries," Ilyichev added.

Earlier, the delegation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a lot of problems getting US visas to travel to New York to participate in the UN Security Council’s events on April 24 and 25. Representatives from the Russian news media weren’t issued visas at all. The US didn’t provide any explanation as to the motivations for this decision. In response to this, Lavrov said that the United States was "scared" and assured reporters that Russia "will not forget or forgive" this incident.