UNITED NATIONS, August 20. /TASS/. Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky has slammed plans of UN Security Council members to go to Geneva to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Convention as unseemly amid what is going on in the world.
He reiterated that the Swiss delegation had invited Russia to take part in the events in Geneva, but Moscow had turned this invitation down. According to Polyancky, this trip "is an initiative of a group of permanent representatives who simply decided to have good time in Geneva."
"We think that the Security Council has much more important things to do than making trips to serene Geneva. There are a lot of hotbeds of tension which require our attention," he said. "We have been saying that our visit would be much more appropriate to a troubled area where the Security Council’s presence would be really essential for, say, crisis settlement in this country. Frankly speaking, we don’t know what we can do in Geneva - it will be a mere waste of money, resources and time."
The scheduled date of the Geneva events - August 25 and 26, according to Polyansky, also gives rise to questions "because the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions will be marked in October with the participation of the International Committee of the Red Cross."
"The Security Council should address more important things rather than travelling across Europe," he stressed.
According to the Swiss foreign ministry, during their trip to Switzerland next week, the UN Security Council members will meet with Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, as well as Sierra Leonean Foreign Minister Timothy Kabba.
Four documents setting humanitarian rules of warfare were adopted on August 12, 1949 and came into effect on October 21, 1950. They are known as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which replaced treaties of 1864, 1906, and 1929. Switzerland was the first to ratify the Geneva Conventions (on March 31, 1950). The former Soviet Union joined them on April 17, 1951.