A U.N. committee took no action Tuesday on the U.S. refusal to grant a visa to Iran’s chosen ambassador to the United Nations after hearing from both sides, AP reported on Wednesday, April 23rd.
The Committee on Relations with the Host Country could have made a recommendation to the 193-member General Assembly or asked the U.N. legal office for an opinion.
Instead, Cypriot Ambassador Nicholas Emiliou, who chairs the committee, told reporters after the closed meeting that the issue remains on the committee’s agenda “and we will revert to it if necessary.
“President Barack Obama signed legislation on April 18 to block Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi from entering the United States to become Iran’s permanent representative to the U.N. because of his ties to the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Tuesday in response to a question about the visa denial that “as far as we know this is a unique case involving a permanent representative.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, Emiliou said, “Iran and the United States presented their views on the well-known incident concerning the denial of visa to the new permanent representative of Iran.” “There was a discussion … with the participation of several delegations,” he said.
The United States was represented at the meeting by deputy ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo and Iran by its charge d’affaires, deputy ambassador Gholamhossein Dehghani.
The United States said it took its responsibility as host country for the United Nations very seriously but expressed longstanding concerns about Aboutalebi’s admitted role in the hostage crisis, the diplomats said.
The U.S. said it was intolerable that someone involved in depriving U.S. diplomats of protection should be given diplomatic protection in the United States, the diplomats said.
The host committee also touched on another issue — the near impossibility for Iran to find a bank in New York to do business with because of U.S. and U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program.