Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Statement by First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy at UNSC briefing on the situation in Iraq

Mr.President,

We thank Special Representative of the Secretary-General Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert for delivering a meaningful briefing on the situation in Iraq. We listened carefully to Ms.Amal Kabashi.

We appreciate the convening of early elections to Iraq’s Council of Representatives on 10 October. We hope that soon MPs will be able to agree on forming a new capable government that should enjoy support of all major political parties and ethnic and confessional groups of the country.

We realize that Iraqis are living through a very complicated period. We call on the leading political forces to act in a reserved manner and seek mutually acceptable solutions to internal political disputes that exacerbated after the elections.

Obviously, the huge cluster of problems that evolved over years due to objective reasons cannot be resolved overnight. We fully realize that it is not going to be easy for future Iraqi authorities to account for the entire range of opinions existing in the political, social, ethnic and confessional landscape of the country in order to improve the state of affairs in Iraq, ensure security and legal order.

The state of affairs is aggravated by worrisome socio-economic situation and the spread of coronavirus. In this context, we underscore the need to render international assistance to Baghdad so that it could recover economic and humanitarian sectors that were devastated during the war against ISIL. Thereby we have to state that terrorists keep carrying out regular subversive acts in various regions of Iraq.

Mr.President,

We strongly condemn the attack on Prime Minister Al-Kadhimi’s residence that used explosive-laden UAVs. We perceive it as an attempt to undermine security and stability of the country. We reiterate that we are ready to strengthen practical cooperation with Iraqi partners in combating terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. We stress that it is essential to boost collective international action in order to counter this global threat uncompromisingly.

We underscore that we can effectively respond to this challenge only given maximum broad coordination of counter-terrorism efforts. In this regard, we highly appreciate the activity of Baghdad-based four-lateral Information Center, where the military of Russia, Iraq, Iran and Syria take part. We believe this mechanism does the important work coordinating counter-terrorism steps in Iraq and Syria.

We perceive positively the efforts made by the authorities of Iraq and the Kurdish autonomous region in order to resolve the existing contradictions. We are convinced that further improvement of relations between Baghdad and Erbil will promote security and help resolve the problems at hand – for the benefit of both Kurds and the entire Iraqi nation.

Mr.President,

Any illegal military presence in Iraq is unacceptable. We proceed from the understanding that foreign military formations can be deployed in the country only given consent of local authorities or an effective UNSC decision. We call upon all external stakeholders, who are interested in stabilizing the internal situation in Iraq to keep from unilateral destructive steps that affect the situation both within and outside the Iraqi borders.

In this regard, we trust that countries of the region will unleash their diplomatic potential in order to promote peace and stability in the entire Middle East, including in the framework of the renewed Russian collective security concept for the Persian Gulf.

Thank you.

 

In response to a representative of Estonia:

Mr.President,

I was not going to take the floor again, yet I cannot but say how surprised I am over the frantic obsession that our Estonian colleagues demonstrate at almost every UNSC meeting – when they use any pretext to depict perversely the developments at the Belarusian-Polish and Belarusian-Lithuanian border. In this, we see a striving to twist the reasons that had led to a migration crisis that exacerbated recently at some sections of European Union’s external border, and obfuscate the responsibility of Western states for dismantling statehood of some Middle Eastern countries.

Today we discuss the problems of Iraq that have remained unresolved for years –a vivid example of this practice that made hundreds of thousand people seek a better life in Europe.

By the way, as part of the then international coalition, our Estonian friends bear direct responsibility for this.

My Estonian colleague forgot to mention that any refugee who arrived in Belarus can leave the country at any moment. More than 400 people recently did so, having left for Iraq with the help of Belarusian authorities. So if there is anything that provokes condemnation or rejection today – it is hypocritical and inhumane policy of the European Union, which counter to its proclaimed values tries to ignore harsh treatment of refugees by Polish and Lithuanian border officers who by doing so violate all international conventions one can think of and, for that matter, any norms of civilized behavior.

We hope that our Estonian friends, who contend for the title of rights advocates, will have enough courage to condemn this inhumane practice (which affects women and children) inside the European Union.

Thank you.