UN Security Council turns down Russia’s N Stream resolution draft

UN, Mar 28 (PRIME) -- The U.N. Security Council has not approved Russia’s draft resolution that called on U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to create an international commission for a transparent and fair investigation of the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, according to information obtained by PRIME late on Monday.

The draft had to receive nine votes out of 15 in order to be approved, but only Russia, China and Brazil voted for it. The co-authors of the draft resolution were China, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Eritrea, Syria, and North Korea.

China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N. Geng Shuang said that Beijing was sorry that the U.N. had not approved the draft resolution because the sabotage of the pipelines made an impact not only on the European security, but on the global infrastructure as well. It was necessary to conduct an unbiased investigation and publish its results as soon as possible, he said.

“Some countries said that ungrounded accusations predetermine the results of investigative actions. On the contrary, a U.N. investigation is the most appropriate and reliable way of conducting an investigation. AS long as these countries block the Council’s decision on an international investigation, it creates concerns that they are hiding something,” he said.

Russia’s Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzya said that suspicions about who had been behind the pipeline blasts only grew after the U.N. Security Council vote. The U.S. and its allies were doing everything possible in order to prevent a transparent international investigation.

“At first, Washington made public threats at the highest level to blow this pipeline. And then, they sneered and expressed joy about it being blown up,” he said.

The U.S. and its allies are trying to cover up their tracks. The draft resolution did not include a single word about involvement of the U.S. or any other country in the sabotage, but the U.S. representative said that Russia’s accusations were groundless and that the investigation would question any conclusions of national investigations that would contradict Russia’s predetermined position.

“I have a question for the U.S. representative – what predetermined thing did he discover in our resultion? We have a saying that it was their guilty conscience speaking,” Nebenzya said.

Russia doubts that the investigations of Denmark, Sweden, and Germany would be objective and transparent, and the countries show no intent to cooperate with interested countries. At the same time, Moscow will not put forward any more draft resolutions because the vote showed the real relation toward the issue. The Security Council is responsible to the international community for attacks like these, he said.

At the same time, several allies of the U.S. that abstained from voting on the draft resolution said that Russia was biased.

U.K. Deputy Permanent Representative James Kariuki said that a U.N. commission was not necessary given the national investigations and that Russia’s goal with this resolution was to politicize the problem against another member of the Security Council. A Swiss representative said that another investigation was not necessary given multiple ongoing investigations, while a Japanese diplomat said that the Security Council should wait for the national investigations to conclude and discuss further steps after that if they would be necessary.

Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyansky told PRIME that the West exerted pressure on members of the Security Council so that they vote against Russia’s resolution. Nevertheless, several members of the council stood for a transparent and swift investigation of the incident, sending many signals to the authorities of Denmark, Sweden, and Germany that they need to conclude their investigations and notify the council about their results.

“This was some sort of pressure from this part of the council’s members that abstained from the vote but still supported necessity of quick improvements and of making many details clearer. I think that it is a positive result of the voting that happened today,” he said.

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