Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations
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Q: Ambassador, should we expect vote on Western Sahara tomorrow?

V.Churkin: No. Tomorrow it cannot take place because the text is not in blue and there is an ongoing discussion of experts and the tone of consultations which were held earlier tells me that these expert discussions are not going to be easy. So tomorrow the vote cannot take place. We agreed that we will try to adopt the resolution on Friday. Obviously we are under a lot of time pressure. We will see what happens.

Q: Did Staffan de Mistura give you any indication on when the next round of peace talks might take place?

V.Churkin: He said that he is going to make an announcement very shortly. Of course we expressed the hope that the interval between two rounds of talks (second and third) is not going to be very big. Generally speaking, even though he did express considerable concern about some sort of erosion of the regime of cessation of hostilities, I think he gave a rather positive description of what he was able to achieve in the course of the second round of talks. Unfortunately, the so-called Supreme Negotiating Committee (I don’t know why they call themselves that because they are Negotiating Committee but they refuse to negotiate) they did not participate but there were some good exchanges between the government delegation and the delegation of three opposition groups there - Moscow platform, Cairo platform and also what Staffan de Mistura calls “internal platform”. We call them “Hmeymim Group”. Anyway, there were some good exchanges, including on a very difficult issue of political transition. We think there is something which can be picked up and developed in the course of continued negotiations.

Q: When you say that he will announce the new date shortly do you mean the press-conference that is holding in chamber? Did he tell you the exact day?

V.Churkin: No. He didn’t. This was my understanding. I cannot interpret “shortly”.

Q: Question on Western Sahara. Which part you don’t agree on?

V.Churkin: We are studying the draft. We have been discussing it for a few days and today it was distributed among the Security Council members. Some Council members did not feel it was strong enough. We are looking into it, we are reporting to our capital and I hope the resolution is going to be adopted. We need to continue the mandate and we do believe that the mission should be returned to its full capacity.

Q: Is there any chance tomorrow as planned?

V.Churkin: No. Tomorrow it cannot be adopted because the members of the Security Council did not have a chance to study the draft and there is a 24-hour rule – the resolution has to be in blue for 24 hours and it is not yet in blue. If it is put in blue tomorrow then on Friday hopefully it can be adopted.

Q: Do you have any issues with the US draft?

V.Churkin: There is always room for improvement and I’m sure that some delegations participating in those consultations will express this view in much stronger terms.