UNITED NATIONS, August 3. /TASS/. Another voting on the draft resolution in UN Security Council on establishing an international tribunal on Flight MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine will lead to the same result as the first voting, when Russia vetoed the draft document, Russia’s Ambassador to UN Vitaly Churkin told TASS First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman in an exclusive interview on Monday.
"Several media reported that Ukrainian foreign minister [Pavlo Klimkin] said that they allegedly plan to come back with the same draft resolution in several months. However, that would seem to be an absolutely lightweight approach, as it would have the same result," Churkin said.
"When discussing their draft law in [UN] Security Council, we said: you can ask UN secretary general, he may suggest different options. He has a great legal department, high professionals with accumulated international experience. However, this ‘quintet’ [Ukraine, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Malaysia] chose another path, [they] said: we know it better. Well, if they ‘know it better’, then sometimes situations happen that should rather be avoided, like voting and debates in UN Security Council that took place on July 29," the diplomat explained.
On July 29, Russia vetoed the United Nations Security Council resolution on establishing an international tribunal to prosecute persons guilty of the MH17 plane crash over Ukraine on July 17, 2014. Eleven Security Council members voted for the Malaysia-proposed draft, which, in fact, was enough for its adoption but Russia used its right of veto. Another three countries, including Angola, Venezuela and China, abstained from voting. Churkin said that the draft resolution was "devoid of any legal and precedent basis" while authors of the draft document preferred political and propagandistic aims to practical tasks.
The Russian ambassador to UN has told TASS he does not rule out the possibility that five countries that put forward the draft resolution will try to get the same draft document through UN General Assembly, where veto right cannot be used.
"This is a possible scenario. As I see it, they have a certain choice here. They can take the ordinary path accepted in UN General Assembly — that is, to hold standard consultations on the draft resolution in UN General Assembly so that we can also participate in these consultations. Then some kind of judicial authority may be established on the basis of UN General Assembly that could hold a trial," Churkin noted.
"However, there is also another way which they followed when developing this draft resolution vetoed by us — the shadow way. They could prepare a draft by themselves and submit it for voting to UN General Assembly. It will maybe even get two-thirds of votes necessary for adoption, or half of the votes, depending on how you view this draft resolution from procedural point of view. In this case, as it seems to me, the possibility is great that the legal body will not represent true cooperation which is necessary to restore truth in this complicated situation. We will see. It is not yet confirmed that they will do precisely this," Churkin concluded.