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April 23, 2014
Hamid Abutalebi, Iran's proposed UN ambassador, smiles in this undated photo. Reuters pic, April 23, 2014.Iran asked the United Nations yesterday to demand that the United States grant a visa to Tehran's proposed new UN envoy, while Washington stood firm on its decision to deny entry to Hamid Abutalebi over his suspected links to hostage-takers.
The United States has said it would not grant a visa to Abutalebi because of his connection to the 1979-1981 Tehran hostage crisis when Iranian students seized the US Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Abutalebi has said he acted only as a translator.
The UN Committee on Relations with the Host Country, which deals with the issues of states operating in the United States such as immigration, security, banking and parking violations, met yesterday at Iran's request to discuss the matter.
"We firmly believe that this is a very serious issue and the committee should address it in an urgent and serious way," Iran's Deputy UN Ambassador Hossein Dehghani told the panel.
Washington's denial of a visa for Abutalebi was "so obviously" a breach of a 1947 "headquarters agreement" between the United States and the United Nations that "the committee should deal with it in an extraordinary way", Dehghani said.
Under the pact, the United States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. Washington has said it can deny visas for "security, terrorism, and foreign policy" reasons.
A 1947 Joint Resolution of Congress said nothing should be seen as "diminishing, abridging, or weakening the right of the United States to safeguard its own security and completely control the entrance of aliens" into any part of the United States aside from UN headquarters.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, "As far as we know this is a unique case involving a permanent representative (ambassador)."
The 19-member Committee on Relations with the Host Country could ask UN lawyers for an opinion to establish if there is a dispute between the United Nations and the United States on the issue.
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