YouSaid · the spoken record

Polyanskiy

lines on the record: 2,335
first: 2018-01-31
most recent: 2023-12-22
sittings or episodes: 300
sources: un-security-council

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“And now the so-called Foreign Ministry of Kosovo is asking the Secretary-General to reduce the United Nations presence, which is supposedly discrediting itself, and to conduct the much-discussed review of the Mission. These are all links in the same chain. Representatives of some States, permanent members of the Security Council, are cultivating the same behind-the-scenes tactics as the Secretariat, and we are aware of that. Fabricated stories, with no basis in reality, about so-called Russian spies are now becoming a trend in the West. We firmly reject such unscrupulous manoeuvres. The mandates of peacekeeping missions should be considered at the Security Council table, not rewritten in the corridors. The years of indulgence that the Pristina authorities have had from the West have resulted in their deliberate defiance oftheir patrons.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“Proposing to seek the truth from the Kosovo's outlaw police force, who knowingly violated all written and unwritten norms in beating up a United Nations staff member and then began creating a false picture of the events with the support and participation of Kosovo's highest authorities, is an absurd mockery. It devalues the European Union's role in Kosovo and its claims to be helping to ensure the rule of law there. I would like to point out that this is not the first time that there has been a provocation involving a Russian staff member working for UNMIK. A Russian UNMIK volunteer was previously detained by the Kosovo police under false pretences.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“As was already emphasized today, that procedure is not applicable to United Nations staff and can be used by States only in the context of their bilateral relations. Yet even in those cases the Kosovars have no right to take such a step because they do not have international legal standing as a subject. Clearly, an understanding of the finer points of international law is not Kosovo officials' strong point. The European Union Rule ofLaw Mission in Kosovo has advised us to entrust the investigation ofthe incident to the very Kosovo police who as we understand it were responsible for it.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“Citaku, had just made it unambiguously clear that it does not intend to respect United Nations immunity going forward. Its erosion is likely to have serious consequences for both the Organization and its members. I think we all understand that perfectly well. If we let things slide now, United Nations personnel in other parts of the world could find themselves in a similar situation in the future, and then it will be too late to appeal to universal diplomatic norms. Pristina has launched a propaganda campaign against both the United Nations and Russia. Its motives are clear - first, discredit UNMIK and get it closed down, and secondly, affirm its so-called statehood at any cost. The so-called Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Kosovo has declared Mr. Krasnoshchekov persona non grata.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“Incidentally, just the week before, the Serbian parties had had a major win over Albanian parties in the municipal elections. The attempt to take control of the north legally had failed, so they switched to the second option of doing it by force. People in the Balkans remember the events of the 1990s very well. One careless word or gesture is enough to lead to new bloodshed and for simmering conflict to catch fire with renewed force. Why was it necessary to consciously provoke such a situation? Kosovo's Western backers have all but ignored this aggressive action, including a crude, premeditated Violation of a United Nations staff member's immunity. Today our United States colleagues could not even manage a few words in defence of United Nations staffers' immunity. While Pristina, through Ms.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“However, in the past few years such incursions have happened again and again with the full connivance of the Kosovo Force, which is mandated by the Security Council to ensure peace and security in Kosovo. We believe that those actions were intentional, deliberate and meant to provoke. Such zealous crime-fighting has not previously been typical of the Pristina authorities, and the timing of the attack was not accidental. As it happened, on the eve of the events President Aleksandar Vueie of Serbia had indicated in a statement in Parliament his willingness to work on a compromise solution to the Kosovo issue. However, the Kosovo Albanian authorities nevertheless decided to show that they were already the boss in the north.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“Krasnoshchekov produce his UNMIK staff identification, and was he beaten? Ms. Citaku just claimed that none of that happened. However, we have a large number of photographs that confirm the opposite. Incidentally, there are quite a lot of videos on the Internet showing the Kosovo special forces' thuggish and unpunished actions. I would be grateful for answers. I would like to remind the Council that during the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina with the participation and support of the West, an understanding was reached that the Kosovo Special Police Unit, who are armed with long guns, would not enter the northern areas where Serbs live. It was an unwritten gentleman's agreement of sorts.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“Under the unlikely watchword of combating organized crime, Kosovo Albanian special forces invaded Serb municipalities in northern Kosovo. As a result, 28 people were arrested, mostly Serbian police officers. Mikhail Krasnoshchekov, a citizen of the Russian Federation and staff member of UNMIK, was beaten and detained while carrying out his duties. Ms. Citaku has just provided us with a completely absurd version of the actions of Mr. Krasnoshchekov, whose last name Pristina did not even bother to write down correctly. Apparently he was felling trees for barricades, put his chainsaw carefully in the trunk, stood in front of the barricades and then refused to provide his identification as an UNMIK staffer. Does she even believe such rubbish herself? An investigation is understandably under way, but I have two questions for Mr. Tanin. Did Mr.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“Vlora Citaku's statement, but frankly there is nothing to thank her for other than for being an eloquent exemplar of lies, insinuations and historical fantasies inciting hatred that are not worthy of the Security Council Chamber. And that is instead of simply apologizing for the marauding acts of her compatriots, which to be honest is what many of us were expecting. In spite of the fact that the events of 28 May in northern Kosovo were not included in the Secretary- General's report under consideration on the situation in Kosovo (S/2019/461), we believe it would have been entirely logical to make them a priority focus for today's meeting considering the all too blatant illegality of the Kosovo authorities' outrageous actions.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“Mr. Polyanskiy (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): We welcome the participation in today's meeting oer. Ivica Dacie, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Serbia, and share his serious concerns about the situation in Kosovo. We are grateful to Mr. Zahir Tanin, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), for his informative briefing on the situation in Kosovo. In general we share his assessments. We also thank Mr. De Serpa Soares, Under-Secretary- General for Legal Affairs and United Nations Legal Counsel, for the clarifications he provided. We also listened attentively to Ms.”
2019-06-10 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8541 (2019) · source
“The wording of Security Council draft resolutions sometimes changes just minutes before a vote, leaving us with half-baked documents that do not take the concerns of Council members into account. All of these issues are unacceptable, in our View, and we will fight such tactical tricks. We do not exclude the possibility that ultimately we may also be obliged to assess the effectiveness of the penholders' work based on these parameters.”
2019-06-06 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8539 (2019) · source
“Individual Council members should not consider certain countries and even regions as their fiefdoms or act as mentors on certain issues. We must expand the circle of penholders, particularly in favour of non-permanent members. We also strongly oppose the practice of working to artificial deadlines. It is no secret that the adoption dates for the majority of Security Council resolutions are usually known by the stage of agreement on the monthly programme of work. We nevertheless receive many draft texts unreasonably late, which does not allow us to gather multiple expert assessments, let alone hold comprehensive consultations. We sometimes get the impression that penholders are doing that deliberately, on the assumption that in their haste, their colleagues will simply not notice problematic points.”
2019-06-06 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8539 (2019) · source
“However, they are not official meetings of the Council, and we believe that such formats should be used only to raise Council members' awareness of issues on its agenda. It is unacceptable to use those platforms for propaganda performances or for individual delegations' controversial unilateral approaches. I should point out that the costs of using the premises of United Nations Headquarters, its conference services and, in some cases, its translators for such events are covered by the Organization's regular budget. The Kuwait presidency's proposals for further modernizing and democratizing the Council's work through an equal distribution of responsibilities for informally supervising certain dossiers deserve special attention.”
2019-06-06 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8539 (2019) · source
“We take a very cautious approach to the consideration of thematic subjects in the Council, especially those that according to the Charter of the United Nations come under the remit of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council or other bodies of the Organization, violating the established division of labour and distracting the Council from its work on its priority tasks on which it can and should make concrete decisions. We support the notion of the importance of expanding the Security Council's coordination with a wide range of Member States and those that can provide it with important information for decision-making. The Council has appropriate mechanisms for that in its arsenal, including interactive dialogues and informal Arria Formula meetings.”
2019-06-06 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8539 (2019) · source
“We operate on the assumption that the starting point of our efforts should be the importance of ensuring Council members' unity on as many issues as possible. We note non-permanent members' active interest in procedural aspects of the Council's work, which should undoubtedly help our collective efforts to improve our best practices. We want to continue to draw attention to the Council's overburdened documentary workload. The Security Council produces several hundred documents every year, some of which, it has to be admitted, have dubious added value, and the excessive predilection for micromanaging resolutions is not helpful either. We believe that the Security Council's final products should be short, clear, easy to understand and above all action-oriented, an area in which I support our British colleagues.”
2019-06-06 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8539 (2019) · source
“Using populist rhetoric about this, including in the context of the endless calls for increasing the transparency of the Security Council's work, not only does not help to achieve results, it often actually does damage. We welcome the efforts of the delegation of Kuwait to improve the working methods of the Security Council and have taken note of its intention to introduce changes into the revised note by the President (S/2017/507), which is important as a compendium of Council working practices and is actively used by non-permanent members as a serious source. For our part, we are ready to give the Kuwaiti delegation every assistance in this painstaking work, which must be done thoughtfully, thoroughly and without undue haste.”
2019-06-06 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8539 (2019) · source
“We are confident that this discussion, as well as the very fact of the external assessment of the current state of affairs, will make a special contribution to the activities of the Working Group and help to enrich it with new ideas. That is of course in the understanding that the Council's working methods themselves, and any steps taken to modify them, belong to the members of the Council. The issue of the Security Council's working methods is a very sensitive one. We believe that any changes in this area should focus on increasing the Council's effectiveness and efficiency in executing its primary task of maintaining international peace and security.”
2019-06-06 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8539 (2019) · source
“Mr. Polyanskiy (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): I would first like to express our gratitude to Ms. Karin Landgren and Mr. James Cockayne for their detailed briefings. We also want to thank the delegation of Kuwait for organizing today's meeting. The Security Council has been discussing its working methods in an open format with the participation of a wide range of States Members of the United Nations for a number of years now. We consider this a useful practice, since periodic reviews of our existing toolkit enable us to determine what is needed to improve it further. It is important that today's meeting is being presided over by the delegation that heads the Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions.”
2019-06-06 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8539 (2019) · source
“The destabilization of the situation in one country is capable of disturbing the entire subregion and undermining its neighbours' security, and it is therefore very important not to cross the line between prevention and meddling in domestic affairs.”
2019-06-04 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8538 (2019) · source
“The problem of the Anglophone provinces is not new. The division of former colonies without regard for their religious, linguistic and ethnic differences has resulted in a number of hotbeds of tension in Africa, including Cameroon. We urge all the Cameroonian parties to show maximum restraint. Resolving the country's internal problems will be possible only at the negotiating table through substantive national dialogue, with respect for human rights and the rule of law. In conclusion, I want to point out that the challenges and threats that the Central African region is facing today are inextricably linked, as are the States themselves.”
2019-06-04 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8538 (2019) · source
“We hope that experience can be useful in resolving similar problems in the Gulf of Guinea, including in the context of possibly expanding the geographic mandate of the Contact Group to include the Gulf of Guinea. We are concerned about the continuing activities of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). While it has been marginalized in the past few years thanks to the successful efforts of armed forces ofthe region, it is still plundering and robbing in various areas of the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the States of Central Africa should keep the fight against the LRA in their sights. We hope that the concept for eradicating this threat, developed under the auspices of the Economic Community of Central African States, will bear fruit. We are following the development of events in Cameroon.”
2019-06-04 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8538 (2019) · source
“For our part, we will continue our firm support to the process of national reconciliation, coordinating our efforts with everyone involved in the quest to find pathways to normalizing the situation without hidden agendas. Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea is one of the other factors creating instability in the Central African region. Regrettably, the armed-robbery attacks on foreign vessels have continued, and among others Russian sailors have been taken hostage. We have had a positive experience in participating in international efforts to fight piracy in the north-western Indian Ocean as part of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia.”
2019-06-04 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8538 (2019) · source
“According to some estimates, it added around 2,000 new recruits to its ranks in 2018. We are ready to continue working actively in various platforms in order to eliminate the terrorist threat on the African continent. We are focusing in particular on identifying local terrorists' sources of financing for local terrorists and their contacts with other international radical groups. Russia is closely monitoring the situation in the Central African Republic. We support President Touadera's efforts to start an inclusive political dialogue, launch security-sector reform as soon as possible and build the armed forces' capacity. The Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in the Central African Republic, signed on 6 February, represents an important starting point for a future settlement of the country's situation.”
2019-06-04 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8538 (2019) · source
“It will be crucial to ensure that it is adequately funded in order to enable the States of the Lake Chad basin to continue their joint operations aimed at pursuing and eliminating militants in transborder areas. We note that there has been a certain amount of success in combating Boko Haram, with the support of the international community. However, Boko Haram still has fighting potential and is capable of conducting serious attacks. Its fighters are still active in Chad, including in the border areas with the Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, where extremists have been attacking civilians, United Nations and non-governmental organizations' personnel, and Chadian military roadblocks. We are seriously concerned about the substantial influx into Boko Haram of foreign terrorists, including fighters from the Islamic State.”
2019-06-04 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8538 (2019) · source
“In that context, it is especially important to ensure that the regions themselves take the leading role in preventing crises and resolving conflicts. For our part, we are ready to support their efforts. We consider the Central African region key to combating the spread of terrorism on the continent as a whole. The penetration of radical and terrorist elements into Central Africa has been accompanied by illegal trafficking in weapons and drugs and income from the exploitation of minerals. We appreciate all regional efforts to develop coherent approaches to combating any manifestations of terrorism, of which the activities of the regional multilateral armed forces are a good example.”
2019-06-04 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8538 (2019) · source
“Mr. Polyanskiy (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): I would first like to thank our Indonesian colleagues for their active and productive work in the month of May, and to congratulate you, Mr. President, on your assumption of the presidency and to wish you every success and hopefully a more or less calm month of June, politically speaking. We are grateful to Mr. Francois Lounceny Fall, Special Representative of the Secretary-General, for his assessment of the situation in the Central African subregion. Russia supports the activities of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) as an important tool for implementing preventive diplomacy. We share the view that the challenges facing the countries of the subregion are complex ones.”
2019-06-04 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8538 (2019) · source
“It was not the sanctions but the regional mediators who played a role in it. On top of that, at a particular stage the arms embargo prevented the region from giving flexible support to the settlement with the help of its own security initiatives. Lastly, taking into account the fact that today is the last public meeting of the Council in the Chamber for this month, I would like to thank the Indonesian presidency for its outstanding work and to wish our Kuwaiti colleagues every success.”
2019-05-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8536 (2019) · source
“In that regard, we note that the structures and mechanisms provided for in the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan have been formulated and have begun to be operationalized. We are pleased that there has been a significant reduction in the level of violence and numbers of human rights violations since the signing of the Revitalized Agreement. An increasing number of refugees and internally displaced persons have expressed their willingness to return to their permanent homes. Confidence-building measures are being implemented on the ground and opposition politicians are returning to the capital. We do not share the view that the progress we have seen in the settlement in South Sudan was promoted by the strengthening of the sanctions pressure and the introduction of an arms embargo in July.”
2019-05-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8536 (2019) · source
“Mr. Polyanskiy (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): The Russian delegation was not able to support the technical resolution 2471 (2019) proposed by the United States delegation, which extends the sanctions regime for South Sudan in an unchanged form. We are against the automatic extension of sanctions and urge for basing decisions on the situation on the ground in every such case. The situation in South Sudan is steadily stabilizing. We welcome the agreement on extending the pre-transition period in South Sudan. We know that a number of objective circumstances prevented it from being concluded by 12 May, but a significant part of the agreements reached in Khartoum in September 2018 have nevertheless been implemented.”
2019-05-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8536 (2019) · source
“And in that connection, we welcome the determination of the country's authorities to continue to cooperate productively with the United Nations presence.”
2019-05-22 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8533 (2019) · source
“There is progress in the area of constitutional reform, the positive momentum in the plan for creating a legislative basis for the upcoming election cycle continues, and reform of the financial and economic sectors is proceeding fairly effectively. The Horn of Africa is experiencing major changes. We believe firmly that the steps being taken by all the countries involved, including Somalia, to re-establish good-neighbourly relations will ultimately bring the stability and prosperity they desire. However, we should caution that achieving that goal will be possible only by ensuring strict respect for Somalia's sovereignty and non-interference by external players in its internal affairs. We hope that those principles will guide the new Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Somalia in his work.”
2019-05-22 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8533 (2019) · source
“Its reconfiguration should go hand in hand with the formation of Somalia's military and law-enforcement bodies. The plan is to have AMISOM. participating actively in the preparation and holding of the general elections planned for 2020 and 2021. In the run-up to the elections, so decisive for the country's future, it would not make sense to sharply reduce the number ofAfrican peacekeepers in Somalia. In spite of all the difficulties, we would like to point to some encouraging trends in Somalia's institution-building, including Mogadishu's efforts to build bridges, figuratively speaking, with the federal States.”
2019-05-22 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8533 (2019) · source
“Al-Shabaab represents a threat at the regional level as well, and the terrorist attack in Nairobi in January was a frightening reminder of that. Suppressing the threat of terrorism is a top priority. Effective cooperation in the work of building a national security architecture between the central and federal authorities, with the support of the United Nations and the African Union Mission in Somalia, is especially Vital. Here the most important task is ensuring the gradual transfer of responsibility for the country's security to the Somalis themselves. We hope that the process will be carried out in accordance with the existing plans and will also take into account concrete developments on the ground. AMISOM. continues to play a key role in dealing with security challenges.”
2019-05-22 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8533 (2019) · source
“Mr. Polyanskiy (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): We thank Mr. Raisedon Zenenga, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Somalia, Assistant Secretary-General Ursula Mueller and Mr. Francisco Madeira, Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission and Head of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), for their briefings. The situation in Somalia continues to be problematic. We are concerned about the terrorist group Al-Shabaab's increasing activity. It still controls broad areas of the country, and its fighters are infiltrating cities. According to expert reports, the group has managed to set up an independent production facility for explosives.”
2019-05-22 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8533 (2019) · source
“In general, we hope that the G-5 Sahel Joint Force will become an effective tool for restoring and maintaining peace in West Africa in the very near future.”
2019-05-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8526 (2019) · source
“We believe it is very important for both Africans and the international community to take further coordinated steps aimed at combating terrorism in the Sahel-Sahara region. It is clearly impossible to eradicate this evil by military measures alone, and we also share the concerns of our friends from Equatorial Guinea about the excessive militarization of the region. It is essential to start effectively counteracting the expansion of extremist ideology, tackling the area's acute social and economic problems, strengthening State institutions and ensuring respect for human rights. Russia is closely monitoring the developing situation in the region. We are already providing appropriate military-technical assistance in a number of countries and training military and police personnel.”
2019-05-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8526 (2019) · source
“We were pleased with the information that as of January the Joint Force had resumed its operations in all its areas of responsibility, as well as the fact that its deployment levels have reached 75 per cent. Of course, there are still many unsolved problems. Last year's terrorist attack on the Joint Force headquarters revealed its weaknesses. As we understand it, the relevant conclusions have been drawn and work has been done to fix the mistakes. Of course, for the G-5 Joint Force to function fully, it has to ensure stable and predictable funding. We see that the funds promised by foreign donors are gradually reaching the region. However, many of those who pledged funds have not provided them in a timely manner. In principle, we are willing to consider the possibility of financing the Joint Force from the regular United Nations budget.”
2019-05-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8526 (2019) · source
“In the Sahel we are reaping the fruits of the collapse of statehood in Libya, which was the legacy of a crude foreign intervention. We believe that if the situation in that country is not normalized - and many of the people we talked to during the recent Security Council mission to Mali and Burkina Faso spoke about this - it will be impossible to reliably stabilize the region, practically speaking. We welcomed the initiative of the States of the Group of Five for the Sahel (G-5) to create a Joint Force to combat terrorism and organized crime. It appears that in a relatively short period of time it has already become an important element in regional security.”
2019-05-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8526 (2019) · source
“Mr. Polyanskiy (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): We welcome Mr. Alpha Barry, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Burkina Faso, to today's meeting, and we thank Ms. Bintou Keita, Assistant Secretary- General for Africa, and the other briefers for the information they have given us. We agree with the alarming views expressed today about the situation in the Sahel. The level of the threats to security in this part of Africa is now unprecedentedly high. The geographic area of terrorist activity is expanding, and extremist ideology is continually gaining new adherents. We are very concerned about the attacks on religious shrines and other assaults by extremists and terrorists. The roots of these issues are well known, and Mr. Barry just discussed them.”
2019-05-16 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8526 (2019) · source
“For our part, we supported the adoption of the resolution in consideration of the fact that UNISFA is still one of the few peacekeeping operations working with States that are parties to a conflict. The Russian Federation hopes the shortcomings Ijust mentioned will not have an impact on the effectiveness of the Blue Helmets' fulfilment of their mandate. We assume that the Secretariat will be guided in its implementation by the fundamental principles of peacekeeping that require the consent of the parties involved. We hope that UNISFA's activities will continue to help to build confidence between Khartoum and Juba in the interests of achieving a final settlement of Abyei's status as soon as possible.”
2019-05-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8524 (2019) · source
“Mr. Polyanskiy (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): The Russian Federation voted in favour of resolution 2469 (2019), extending the mandate of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA). We note the stabilization of the situation in Abyei, where intercommunal dialogue has been established. We believe it is essential to maintain the presence of peacekeepers in the region with a View to ensuring security on the border between the Sudan and South Sudan. We pay tribute to the efforts of the Blue Helmets from Ethiopia. However, we feel obliged to point out that the text of the resolution fails to take many of Khartoum and Juba's fundamental concerns into account, as the unofficial penholders are well aware.”
2019-05-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8524 (2019) · source
“In conclusion, I would like to emphasize Russia's desire to develop a mutually beneficial dialogue with Bosnia and Herzegovina on a basis of respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as the broad powers provided for in the Peace Agreement for the two entities and the equal rights of the country's three constituent peoples. We sincerely wish the Bosnian parties every success in building a coalition and gradually resolving all the outstanding issues.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source
“That is the only way to ensure that future solutions will be a viable step forward for Bosnia and Herzegovina in the implementation of the Dayton accords. We repeat that the continued external pressure on Republika Srpska and the Bosnian Serb leadership, primarily through illegitimate, unilateral restrictive measures, is unreasonable and counterproductive. Such actions, and the negative anti-Serb rhetoric of a number of Western colleagues, have been visibly worsening the political atmosphere in the country, stirring up internal disagreements and hampering the building of inter-ethnic trust. We would like to believe that all the participants will soon acknowledge the inappropriateness of those restrictions at the current stage of the Bosnian settlement.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source
“We believe that the key issue for Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to be the completion of the formation of a new Council of Ministers at the central level, and of Governments at the level of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and four of its ten cantons, which should be based on a strong parliamentary majority and focused on pursuing the incremental reforms, which include improving the work of the pan-Bosnian judicial authorities, including the removal of foreign specialists from the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and enhancing the effectiveness, professionalism and impartiality of the Court and the Office of the Prosecutor. However, it will be crucial to ensure that the Bosnians themselves agree independently on the content of all such reforms.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source
“We are convinced that the time for the external protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina is gone forever, and that the Office of the High Representative, with its extraordinary Bonn powers, has become an impediment to the country's future democratic progress. We think it is vital to continue reducing the budget and staffing of the Office, which is fully in keeping with the concept of local ownership approved by the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council more than 10 years ago.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source
“We want to point out that all our colleagues who are interested in a deeper understanding of what has happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina can read the informative and very useful report of the Government of Republika Srpska, which covers the period from November 2018 to April of this year and fills in many of the gaps in the High Representative's report. The Russian position on the stabilization process in Bosnia and Herzegovina will continue to be based on ensuring all parties' strict adherence to the Peace Agreement, the active promotion of an intra-Bosnian political dialogue, the socioeconomic development of the country and its entities and the preservation of cultural diversity.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source
“The Russian delegation did not approve the Steering Board communique of 5 December 2018 for a number of serious reasons. We believe that the text's unsupported negative assessments of the 7 October general elections in Bosnia, its one-sided discussions of war crimes and condescending attitude to the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency only undermine the Steering Board's authority. We hope that this international mechanism will remain focused on formulating consensus-based, long-term approaches to the settlement in Bosnia so that the High Representative will not have to disguise the real state of affairs. We once again note with regret that Council members had only a few days to study the High Representative's report before discussing it in the Council. We would have liked to have had more time to familiarize ourselves with it.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source
“We hope that the experts from 12 countries on the commissions will be able to recreate a comprehensive picture of inter-ethnic and inter-religious crimes in Srebrenica and Sarajevo, since many of them fell outside of the scope of the International Tribunal's activity. We also suggest holding off on any conclusions until the commissions issue their findings. We would also like to draw attention to some quite important procedural aspects. We first call on the High Representative to accurately reflect in his reports the work being done by the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council and to make sure that citations from communiques and statements are accompanied by clear information about the countries that did not support them, if there are any.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source
“The attitude to the creation in Republika Srpska of independent international commissions for investigating the crimes committed between 1991 and 1995 against members of all of Bosnia and Herzegovina's peoples in Srebrenica and against Serbs in Sarajevo also seems extremely biased. The High Representative straight out makes the a priori claim that their ability to contribute to bringing justice and reconciliation between the national groups would be minimal. We think that is an unacceptable approach. We want to emphasize that the establishment of the commissions was the direct result of obvious gaps in the work of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which we have expressed our justifiable concerns about many times.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source
“Inzko's report contains a whole series of negative comments about measures aimed at fully equipping and staffing law- enforcement bodies for two of the constituent entities. This is puzzling, because the High Representative, of all people, should know that all the measures he describes comply fully with existing law. Furthermore, they represent a reaction to the massive increase in the past few years in risks related to migration and the terrorist threats that accompany them. Unfortunately, those topics are not adequately reflected in the High Representative's report.”
2019-05-08 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8522 (2019) · source