Statement by Ambassador Vassily A. Nebenzia, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, on the adoption by the Security Council of the Russian draft resolution 2402 on sanctions against Yemen
We welcome the adoption of resolution 2402 (2018), on the extension of the mandate of the Panel of Experts on Yemen mandated by Security Council resolution 2342 (2017) and the renewal of sanctions pursuant to resolution 2140 (2014), and we thank all the delegations that supported it.
Its unanimous adoption creates an opportunity for further joint work on reaching a settlement for Yemen and improving the situation in the region in general. We assume that the Panel will continue to carefully investigate the information on rockets launched against Saudi Arabian territory, which we condemn in the strongest terms.
We stress once again that we need a united approach from all international and regional stakeholders, including, needless to say, Saudi Arabia and Iran, if we are to deal with the fundamental issues in the region. The Russian Federation supports and values its relations with all the Arab States, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, and we will continue to build on those relations with the aim of improving the situation in the region, where peace must, ultimately, be established. I would like to respond to the United States representative’s remarks.
We withheld our support to draft resolution S/2018/156, proposed by the United Kingdom, not because we wanted to kill it by any means possible, but because we were unable to reach agreement on the wording of a few specific but key sections. I spoke about this earlier.
After all, the goal of the draft resolution is to extend the mandate of the Panel of Experts on Yemen, not to hold Iran accountable or attempt to cobble together an anti-Iran coalition. The United States representative’s statement showed that our concerns in that regard were well founded. In any event, we are grateful to all the members of the Council for making the right decision today
