Russia ‘alarmed’ as US yet to issue visas for delegation to UNGA meeting
- With just weeks to go for the September 19 event, Moscow said not a single member of the Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov-led team has got a US entry visa
- Russia’s ambassador expressed ‘alarm’ to UN chief Antonio Guterres over the matter
Vassily Nebenzia said in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that “this is even more alarming since for the last several months the authorities of the United States have been constantly refusing to grant entry visas to a number of Russian delegates assigned to take part in the official United Nations events.”
The Russian ambassador stressed that the US, as the host country of the UN, is legally required to issue visas, adding that application to attend the high-level UN meetings starting on September 19 had been submitted to the US embassy in Moscow.
Nebenzia asked Guterres “to once again emphasise to the authorities of the US that they must promptly issue requested visas for all Russian delegates and accompanying persons,” including journalists covering Lavrov’s visit.
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A spokesperson for the US mission to the UN said Washington takes its host country obligations seriously and processes “hundreds of visas every year for Russian Federation delegates to UN events.”
“To ensure timely processing, we repeatedly remind the Russian mission to the UN, as we do all other UN missions, that the US needs applications as early as possible,” said the spokesperson, who was not authorised to be quoted by name.
“This is especially important,” the US spokesperson said, “because of Russia’s unwarranted actions against our embassy in Russia, including the forced termination of local and third country national staff, which have severely limited our staffing and therefore our capacity to process visas.”
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In his letter, Nebenzia said among the last examples of US refusals to grant entry visas were to Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev to participate in the just ended UN chiefs of police summit and to Russian representatives seeking to attend a meeting that began on August 29 and continues until September 9 on drafting an “International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes.”
The Russian ambassador quoted from the 1947 agreement between the UN and Washington which states that “visas shall be granted without charge and as promptly as possible” and that this “shall be applicable irrespective of the relations existing between the governments of the persons referred to … and the government of the US.”
UN associate spokesperson Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez said the global body remains in close contact with the US on issues under the UN-US headquarters agreement including visas, and “we are doing so in this case” raised by Russia.
