Did Iran Lose Voting Right Over UN Dues?

Date: 18 January 2021 - 21:19

News ID: ۸۶۶۷۳

TEHRAN (Dispatches) – Iran says it has regularly paid its UN membership contributions despite unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States on Tehran, which have made financial transactions difficult for the Islamic Republic.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Iran is currently in talks with the United Nations treasury on finding a safe transaction channel to bypass the U.S. sanctions.
"Our country’s latest proposal in this regard was to settle arrears using the country’s frozen assets in South Korea,” Khatibzadeh said.
Iran is insisting that the UN should not to use an American bank as the "intermediary” for transfer of Iran’s contributions because of the bleak U.S. history of misappropriating Iranian assets abroad. Otherwise, the world body should guarantee the security of transactions, he added.
Under U.S. pressure, billions of dollars of Iran’s oil money and other funds are held up in several countries. The assets have been subject to a witch hunt by the Americans who have used Washington’s animosity toward the Islamic Republic to easily win lawsuits against the country in U.S. courts.
Last October, reports said a U.S. court had ordered Iran to pay more than $1.4 billion in punitive and compensatory damages to the family of a former FBI agent who allegedly disappeared during a visit to an Iranian island in March 2007.
Iran has denounced U.S. seizures of its frozen assets in the United States as "highway robbery” and hauled the United States before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague.
Under Article 19 of the Charter of the United Nations, a member state in arrears in the payment of its dues in an amount that equals or exceeds the contributions due for two preceding years can lose its vote in the General Assembly.
According to a statement by the UN General Assembly, as of 13 January 2021, ten member states

are subject to the provisions of Article 19 of the charter, which include Iran, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Libya, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. Following the General Assembly’s announcement, UN Secretary General António Guterres wrote a letter to the rotational head of the assembly, noting that the 10 countries had lost their right to vote at the General Assembly meetings on a temporary basis. He said Iran owed over $16 million in UN arrears.