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Iran Meeting With U.N. Officials Over Envoy Dispute Iran Escalates Dispute Over U.N. Envoy
(about 5 hours later)
UNITED NATIONS — Iran raised the pressure at the United Nations on Tuesday over Washington’s refusal to grant a visa to the new Iranian ambassador, scheduling urgent meetings to formally complain to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s legal counsel and to a special General Assembly committee that handles complaints about the host nation, the United States. UNITED NATIONS — Iran’s increasingly angry protests over the American decision to not grant a visa to its new United Nations ambassador, and the uncertainty over how far the dispute will go, have not only rubbed raw feelings on both sides. They have laid bare the limits of global law when its provisions clash with the interests of the host country, the United States.
Mr. Ban’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said a formal letter of protest about the American action, sent by Hossein Dehghani, the Iranian mission’s chargé d’affaires, had been received, and that Mr. Ban’s legal counsel would be meeting with a delegation of Iranians later in the day. Mr. Dujarric said the special committee, known as the Committee on Relations with the Host Country, had scheduled a meeting at Iran’s request on April 22. International jurists, diplomats and other experts familiar with United Nations history said on Tuesday that even if Iran does have legal grounds to argue that its new ambassador’s rights have been violated, there is little it can do. Some suggested the United States might even have sympathy and international law on its side.
Iran has been infuriated by the United States government’s denial of a visa to the new ambassador, Hamid Aboutalebi, calling it an unprecedented violation of international law and of American obligations as the host country of the United Nations. The dispute has injected a new complication into efforts by both governments to defuse other tensions in their 35 years of estranged relations. The Obama administration announced on Friday that it would not grant a visa to the ambassador, Hamid Aboutalebi, whose application had been pending for months. Mr. Aboutalebi, an experienced diplomat, has admitted he was a translator for the Iranian revolutionaries in Tehran who seized the American Embassy and took hostages in 1979, a role that, however minor, made him toxic politically in the United States.
The White House announced on Friday that Mr. Aboutalebi, a veteran diplomat, would not get a visa because of what American officials called his acknowledged role as a translator in the 1979 seizure of the United States Embassy in Tehran. Congress also objected to Mr. Aboutalebi, unanimously passing a measure last week that would ban him as a terrorist. President Obama has not signed the measure into law yet. Neither country has backed down over Mr. Aboutalebi, threatening to complicate efforts by both to defuse other pressing issues in their 35 years of estranged relations, most notably the dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities.
In its formal letter of complaint, distributed by the Iranian mission on Monday evening, Mr. Dehghani wrote that Iran had “serious concern over the clear indication of refusal of granting visa by the host country authorities in breach of their legal obligations under international law and the headquarters agreement.” Iran escalated the pressure on Tuesday, with an urgently scheduled meeting to formally complain to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s legal counsel. The Iranians also requested and received a commitment from a special General Assembly committee that handles complaints about the host nation to schedule an emergency session next Tuesday.
Such behavior, the letter said, “has indeed negative implications for multilateral diplomacy,” and will create a dangerous precedent and “affect adversely the work of intergovernmental organizations and activities of their member states.” “The denial of visa to a representative of a U.N. Member-State is in contravention of the principles of international law and the United Nations Charter including the principles of sovereign equality of states and respect for their sovereignty and political independence,” the Iranian mission said in a letter sent late Monday night to the 19-nation committee, known as the Committee on Relations with the Host Country.
The White House contends that it has the legal right to deny visas to anyone deemed a threat to American security or policy, regardless of the host country responsibilities enshrined in the headquarters agreement, negotiated in 1947. That agreement obliges the United States to allow access to the United Nations by diplomatic representatives of all members — even those the Americans dislike. The committee is led by Cyprus and includes the United States. While the committee does not include Iran, it has other members that have clashed with the host, notably China, Cuba, Libya and Russia.
In most previous instances when the United States objected to the entry of a diplomat, the application was quietly withdrawn. But the United States is not known to have ever denied a visa to an ambassador before. Regardless of the sentiments among committee members, it can only make recommendations, with no power to override an American decision to deny Mr. Aboutalebi a visa. “The bottom line is there is no enforcement mechanism,” a diplomat at the United Nations said. “It’s not as if he will arrive at J.F.K. and be taken in by U.N. security and barged through.”
United Nations officials have not said how Mr. Ban will deal with the dispute. It also is unclear what action the special committee can take, since the committee has no enforcement power. The committee could also refer the matter to the General Assembly. Whether Iran would win a majority of votes among the membership remains to be seen. Even if a majority sided with Iran, there is no expectation that the United States would rescind the decision.
Mr. Dujarric was noncommittal, telling reporters: “We’ll have to wait and see what the committee does and what the committee decides. I don’t want to prejudge what the committee will do.” “What would they expect the U.S. government to do — say ‘O.K., we were kidding’ ?” said Alireza Nader, an Iran expert at the Washington offices of the RAND Corporation. He said Iran would be better off to “just let it drop quietly.”
Mr. Ban’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, declined to speculate on what might happen next. “We’ll have to wait and see what the committee does and what the committee decides,” he told reporters.
Iran’s basic argument is that the United States has violated the Headquarters Agreement signed when it agreed to host the world body in New York. The 1947 agreement obliges the host to allow access to foreign diplomatic representatives, even from countries the United States dislikes. But the United States also enacted a law that year implementing the agreement, in which the host reserved the right to “safeguard its own security” by denying visas to foreign visitors to the United Nations deemed to be a threat.
Larry D. Johnson, an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School who was the United Nations deputy legal counsel from 2006 to 2008, said numerous clashes ensued over the years between the organization and host over the visa issue. Eventually, he said, the United States and United Nations came to an understanding that if the United States objected to a diplomat’s visa application, the United Nations would inform officials of that diplomat’s government, and “it’s up to them to decide to make a fuss or challenge or not.”
Mr. Johnson said that “supposedly many times the other country doesn’t insist and it goes away quietly —none of this is publicized. And sometimes the U.S. delays issuing the visa until it’s too late.”
In a 1988 case, when the United States denied a visa to Yasir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization at the time, the United Nations meeting was moved from New York to Geneva.
Legal experts said Mr. Aboutalebi’s case was highly unusual.
John B. Bellinger III, a partner at the Washington office of Arnold & Porter and a former legal adviser to the State Department and National Security Council in the administration of George W. Bush, said Iran runs a risk of embarrassment by pressing the issue, because sympathy with the American side in the 1979 hostage crisis remains potent.
“It is not clear that other countries will want to make an issue over the denial of a visa to Aboutalebi, who played at least some role, even if small, in the most egregious violation of diplomatic law and the security of diplomatic personnel in modern times,” Mr. Bellinger wrote in Lawfare, a legal blog.
Jordan J. Paust, an international law expert at the University of Houston, said the United States could also rest its case on another aspect of international law: human rights. Under the 1980 International Court of Justice ruling in the Tehran embassy seizure, Professor Paust said, the court found that the arbitrary detention and mistreatment of American hostages violated human rights law and other international law.
Under articles of the United Nations Charter, he said, the United States could argue that denial of Mr. Aboutalebi’s visa request is necessary in this case to enforce “universal respect for, and observance of” human rights. He also said the Charter specifies that United States obligations under the Charter “must prevail over those under any other international agreement, like the Headquarters Agreement.”