Russia proposes moving UN meeting venue from US to Geneva, Switzerland

United Nations headquarters in New York (USA). Photo: TASS

Earlier, the Russian representative at the United Nations announced the possibility of making the above decision. The reason is that the US often refuses to provide visas to the Russian delegation when attending the United Nations meetings in New York.

According to the regulations, the Conference on Disarmament takes place monthly. In October, the meetings were held continuously every day. According to the format, relevant documents were allowed to be submitted to the Committee before October 17. This means that, at the last minute, the Russian delegation officially submitted to the United Nations for consideration a draft to change the meeting location of the Disarmament Committee of the General Assembly.

The Conference on Disarmament was established by the international community to negotiate multilateral arms control and reach disarmament agreements. Resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly often require the Conference to consider specific disarmament issues. In turn, the Conference reports annually on its activities to the UN General Assembly.

The visa issue has been the subject of discussion at the UN Commission on Relations with Host States. Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Gennady Kuzmin said that many representatives of the world body at the meetings supported Moscow's position on the US violation of the host country's obligations. However, in order to stabilize the organization of the Commission, such discussions have not brought about any fundamental changes.

Stefan Dujarric, secretary of the UN Secretary-General, noted that the decision to change the venue of meetings can be made by the organization's member states by vote.