UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The US accused U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of “apparently yielding to Russian threats” and never sending officials to Ukraine to examine drones utilized by Russia that Washington and others say were supplied by Iran.
Russia has denied its forces used Iranian drones in Ukraine and argues there isn’t any mandate for U.N. officials to travel to Kyiv to research the origin of the drones. Iran has acknowledged it had supplied Moscow with drones, but said they were sent before Russia invaded its neighbor in February.
Britain, France, Germany, the US and Ukraine say the provision of Iranian-made drones to Russia violates a 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution enshrining the Iran nuclear deal. They need Guterres to send officials to Kyiv to research.
“We regret that the U.N. has not moved to perform a traditional investigation of this reported violation,” U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Robert Wood told a Security Council meeting on Monday on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resolution.
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“We’re disenchanted that the Secretariat, apparently yielding to Russian threats, has not carried out the investigatory mandate this council has given it,” Wood said.
In a report back to the council earlier this month, Guterres said U.N. officials were examining the available information and any findings can be reported to the council in the end.
When asked on Monday concerning the pressure he faced, Guterres told reporters the Western accusation that Iran had supplied Russia with drones utilized in Ukraine was being checked out “within the broader picture of all the pieces we’re doing within the context of the war to find out if and when we should always” send officials to Kyiv.
Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Security Council on Monday that U.N. officials “shouldn’t bow to pressure from Western countries” and that “any results of this pseudo investigation … are null and void.”
Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, said Iran has not transferred to Russia any items prohibited by the Security Council. He also said Iranian drones supplied to Russia before February weren’t banned by the council and “haven’t been transferred to be used in the continued conflict in Ukraine.”
He described the accusations as baseless and termed them as an attempt “to divert attention from the Western States’ transfer of massive amounts of advanced sophisticated weaponry to Ukraine so as to extend the conflict.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols on the United Nations; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
Copyright 2022 Thomson Reuters.
