Iran Stripped of Voting Rights at UN General Assembly Due to ‘Financial Debt’

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson has responded to reports of Iran being stripped of voting rights at the UN General Assembly due to heavy financial obligations.

The amount of this debt has been reported at over 16 million dollars.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, sent a letter to Volkan Bozkir, President of the seventy-fifth UN General Assembly, requesting the implementation of Article 19 of the UN Charter regarding ten countries, including Iran.

According to Guterres’ statement, Iran and nine other countries including Libya, Niger, Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, São Tomé and Príncipe, should not have voting rights in the General Assembly due to their financial obligations to the United Nations.

The list of these ten countries was published on December 15 on the UN website.

According to Article 19 of the UN Charter, any UN member state of the General Assembly will be stripped of voting rights if it has not paid its membership dues for more than two years.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Sunday in response to the news of non-payment of UN membership dues that the Iranian government has, in recent years, despite limitations resulting from “unilateral sanctions” by the United States, always paid its UN membership dues using “limited financial transfer channels.”

Saeid Khatibzadeh added: “In the current year as well, given the blocking of financial resource transfer channels by the United States, we have been negotiating with the UN Treasury for some time regarding the introduction of a secure channel by the aforementioned organization.”

The Islamic Republic insists that because the United States government has blocked Iran’s international assets, the UN should not use an “American intermediary bank” to transfer Iran’s membership dues, or at least the organization should ensure the security of the transfer route.

Source: Radio Farda