UN committee's resolution on Crimea not to be mandatory even if approved by General Assembly - Kosachyov
MOSCOW. Nov 17 (Interfax) - The resolution of the UN General Assembly's Third Committee on the violation of rights of Crimean Tatars is not the stance of the entire organization and is not mandatory, Federation Council International Affairs Committee Chairman Konstantin Kosachyov said.
"A rather odious resolution titled 'On the Situation of Human Rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol (Ukraine)' has been adopted. Everyone (or everyone who wished so) believed that it was the stance of the United Nations. Yet they are wrong. This is a decision of the UN General Assembly's Third Committee, which will be put to vote in the General Assembly within a month," Kosachyov told the press on Wednesday.
He thinks the resolution "has been authored by Ukraine and the West" and that care for human rights in Crimea is not the motivation behind it.
"Both Kyiv and the West are perfectly aware of the fact that, compared to the situation in that area in Ukraine, Crimea can be described as a picture of tranquility. The very first response of Ukrainian politicians to the Committee vote gave away the real intention. Poroshenko gladly said that Russia had been called an occupant country and Ukraine's Crimea and Sevastopol had been described as temporarily occupied territories," he said.
However, "the document is not mandatory and it will not become such even if it is approved by the General Assembly," he said.
"The emergence of such loud resolutions is absolutely not helping solve all problems around Crimea, Donbas and Ukraine and the normal course of the Minsk process. This plays into the hands of those who are using the pretext of "the 'improvised' support of the entire international community" and are seeking to thwart the implementation of the Minsk agreements at any cost, giving international resolutions they author as an excuse," Kosachyov said.
The UN Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee, aka the Third Committee, adopted a resolution on violations of human rights in Crimea on Wednesday.
The resolution initiated by Ukraine said that rights of Crimean Tatars and other minorities were being infringed in Crimea. It urged the UN secretary general to ensure access of international observers to Crimea to monitor the human rights situation.
