FM Spokesman elaborates on Iran’s membership fee payment to UN

Tehran, Jan 17, IRNA – Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh elaborated on Iran’s membership fee payment methods to the United Nations and said Iran has in the previous years always paid its annual membership fees to the UN through certain limited but secure channels despite the US-imposed financial restrictions . Khatibzadeh reiterated that Iran’s latest proposed way for paying that money was to use Iran’s blocked money in South Korea by through a Central Bank of Iran license, negotiations and collaboration on which are still underway. “Iran insists that due to the US ill-intentions and misusing of Iranian monetary assets at the international scene the United Nations will not use an American bank as the mediator in this money transfer, or that the UN Security Council (UNSC) will ensure the security of this monetary transaction,” he said. That is while the UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutters has in a letter addressed to the rotating head of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) demanded that 10 countries be temporarily deprived of voting right in the UNGA due to their increased debts to the UN. In the letter Gutters has referred to Comoros, Libya, the Central African Republic, Somalia, South Sudan, Sao Tome and Principe, Niger, Congo, Zimbabwe and Iran as the indebted states to the UN. The UN Secretary-General has in the letter claimed that Iran with its $16,251,298 debt ranks first among those ten countries and Niger with $7,000 has the least debt to that organization.