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

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

Earlier, Russia's representative to the United Nations announced the possibility of making such a decision. The reason is that the US often refuses to provide visas to the Russian delegation when attending UN meetings in New York.

According to the regulations, the Conference on Disarmament is held monthly. In October, the meetings were held continuously every day. According to the procedure, 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 proposal 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 to 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 become 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, undersecretary of the UN Secretary-General, noted that the decision to change the venue of meetings can be taken by the organization's member states by vote.

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