Statement by First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy at UNGA debate on the cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations
Mr.President,
Russia retains its commitment to the cooperation of the United Nations with regional and sub-regional organizations. This sort of cooperation constitutes an inalienable element of the current international agenda. We always stand for development of such cooperation on the basis of the Charter of the United Nations, first of all its Chapter 8.
Regional organizations should complement the efforts of the United Nations in their areas of responsibility and within the limits of their respective mandates. In most cases, they have a better knowledge of the situation on the ground and should play the key role in identifying ways to resolve conflicts. In Eurasia, the CSTO is such an organization.
Over years of its existence, the Collective Security Treaty Organization has evolved into an important factor of regional and international security. We would like to emphasize the peaceful and open nature of the CSTO, its readiness to develop and build up constructive interaction with third countries and organizations, including the United Nations.
In this context, we regret the totally inopportune letter of the Ukrainian delegation regarding its plans to vote against the technical rollover of А/77/L.13 – the resolution on the cooperation of the UN and CSTO. It is a clear attempt to project our complex bilateral relations onto a regional organization which is in no way involved in those. Such actions damage the reputation of the Ukrainian delegation in the first place, as it is well known, that the resolution does not contain any politicized, let alone any anti-Ukrainian provisions.
We call on the colleagues to not go on a leash of Ukraine. I remind that the General Assembly adopted this resolution by consensus many times. This year the draft has not received any new elements. Besides, when a technical draft is put to vote, it means that any agreed language in such resolutions may easily be reconsidered. To sum up, for the sake of Ukraine and its Western sponsors, the UN is abandoning further rules of a civilized and constructive conduct, turning more and more into a politicized political platform.
In order to preclude such a scenario and allow no violations of the UNGA working methods, it is important that the draft resolution on the cooperation of the UN and CSTO be supported. We call on the colleagues to be guided by common sense. We also draw attention to the fact that despite this unfriendly spike by Ukraine, we chose to not put to vote the technical draft resolution on GUAM.
Mr.President,
There is one more threat to resolutions on cooperation of the United Nations with regional organizations. I am speaking about attempts to politicize those resolutions. This is illustrated by another UNGA resolution to be considered today - А/77/L.19, which addresses cooperation of the UN with the Central European Initiative. Even though this document was initially focused on economic cooperation, absolutely inappropriate politicized points were added to its PP6 and OP3. This adds unneeded politicizing to regional organizations’ areas of activity, and threatens to proliferate this practice to other similar resolutions.
During the consultations on this draft, some delegations already expressed such concerns. However our European colleagues preferred to ignore those. Instead of elaborating a traditionally depoliticized draft, they packed it full with Russophobic narrative. We are compelled to request a recorded vote on PP6 and OP3 and vote against those paragraphs being reflected in the final text – precisely to prevent politicizing of resolutions on UN and regional organizations. If after the vote those paragraphs are going to remain, we will have to insist on putting the entire resolution to vote and also vote against. We underscore that the blame for this lies entirely with the authors of this draft. We expect other delegations to also speak up against politicizing of resolutions on regional organizations and vote “no”.
Mr.President,
We also must comment on the mentioning in this meeting’s agenda of Note A/77/158 of the Secretary-General dated 13 July 2022, which accompanied the draft OPCW report on the work of the Organization in 2021. To be frank, we find it rather surprising that member states were offered to consider the Note today. This item has not even been considered at the 27th Conference of the States Parties that will kick off in the Hague on 28 November. So apparently, the document was circulated and proposed for today’s discussion ahead of time.
What’s more, the fact that at the 100th session of the OPCW Executive Council a number of states, including Russia, dissociated from consensus on the draft report and its transfer to the Conference of States-Parties was not ever mentioned. We retain serious claims against the report. The OPCW report should be reflective of the entire activity of the Organization in the reporting period, rather than the activities of its Technical Secretariat alone, and should also be purely factual. However, the draft report, despite our demands, does not reflect the position of a range of states regarding the illegitimacy of the so-called Investigation and Identification Team of the OPCW, the activities of which run counter to the Chemical Weapons Convention. The draft report also fails to mention our numerous addresses to the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW where we state that conveyance of information to the so-called International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism on Syria violates para.34 of Article 8 of the CWC. At the same time, the draft report omits (on a far-fetched pretext and apparently, under pressure of certain delegations) any reference to the participation of the OPCW in the 2nd session of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction. We believe this process contributes a lot to making the Convention truly universal. We regret that the US still seeks to bring down its relevance by having ignored the 3rd session of the Conference, which convened in New York last week.
Thank you.
