UN suspends Iran voting rights over unpaid dues

LONDON, June 04 (Agencies): The UN has suspended the voting rights of Iran and four other countries over delinquent dues - a move that has provoked fury from Tehran.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a letter to the president of the General Assembly that Iran had breached the delinquency threshold under Article 19 of the UN Charter.
The article states that any member owing the previous two years' assessments may not vote in the General Assembly.
The Central African Republic, Comoros, Somalia, and Sao Tome and Principe also lost their voting rights over payment issues. In 2020, Venezuela, Yemen and Lebanon temporarily lost theirs for the same reason.
A formula based partly on the size of a country's economy is used to calculate annual dues. Iran now owes the UN more than $16.2 million - by far the highest of the five countries named by Guterres this week.
While the payments can be waived by the General Assembly under extenuating circumstances, that has not yet happened for Iran.
The UN said it is in "intense discussions" with Tehran to rectify the payments issue. Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said the owed money will "soon" be transferred from a bank in South Korea, where some Iranian funds are currently held.
Meanwhile, Iran on Thursday slammed the United Nations' decision to suspend its voting rights for failing to pay its dues as "fundamentally flawed, entirely unacceptable and completely unjustified".
Tehran argues that the $16.2 million it owes to the UN is the result of Washington's crippling sanctions, imposed after former president Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the US from a nuclear deal with Iran.
Iran's voting rights at the UN General Assembly were suspended in January under rules for countries whose arrears are equal to or exceed their contributions due for the past two years.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif expressed his "strong dismay" at the loss of voting rights, in a letter sent Thursday to UN chief Antonio Guterres.
"Iran's inability to fulfil its financial obligation toward the United Nations is directly caused by 'unlawful unilateral sanctions' imposed by the United States," Zarif wrote, according to the letter posted on his Twitter account.
Zarif said Iran rejected the suspension of its voting privileges because Tehran's "incapacity to transfer its financial contribution has been entirely beyond its control".
Guterres, in a May 28 letter to the UN General Assembly, said five nations were barred from voting due to their failure to pay arrears, but added the UN could permit them to vote if it were deemed to be "due to conditions beyond the control" of the member state.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Guterres, said there had been "very intense discussion" with Iran to find a solution.
"It is not from lack of trying, either on our side or their side... but the country falls under a number of bilateral sanctions which makes it a bit challenging," Dujarric told reporters. "These discussions are continuing in good faith."
Zarif urged the UN leadership to "remain true to the purposes and principles" of the UN charter, and to "refrain from any decision that betrays the spirit of sovereign equality of member states, and weakens multilateralism."