GENEVA, February 24. /TASS/. Western countries are sabotaging substantive negotiations at the UN Conference on Disarmament, Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN and other international organizations in Geneva, said.

"We regret to note that Western delegations are not interested in launching substantive work at the conference and fulfilling its negotiating mandate," he said at a session of the UN Conference on Disarmament. According to the diplomat, the West, under far-fetched pretexts, "is hindering the adoption of a comprehensive and balanced working program, shifting the focus to irrelevant and secondary issues," and is also "generally sabotaging all attempts to place the conference’s activities on a negotiating track."

"The US-led blockade of the approval of reports by the conference’s subsidiary bodies with specific conclusions and recommendations last year, including on the organization of work in the current year, is yet another proof of this," he added.