Lawmaker: US Ban on Iran's UN Envoy to Undermine N. Talks
TEHRAN (Tasnim) — A senior Iranian lawmaker said Obama administration’s decision to bar Iran’s newly-appointed ambassador to the UN from entering the US will negatively affect the ongoing talks between Tehran and the six major world powers over Tehran's peaceful nuclear program.
“Naturally the issue (the US decision to bar Iran’s envoy) will leave impacts on the negotiation process and our negotiators should be careful about such US behavior during negotiations and about the (existing) distrust," Member of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mohammad Reza Mohseni Sani told the Tasnim News Agency.
On April 8, the Senate voted to bar Hamid Abutalebi from the US and the White House said he will not be welcomed in the country describing his nomination as “not viable”. The House of Representatives also unanimously passed the same legislation on April 10 and in the latest move, President Barack Obama signed the law on Friday.
The Iranian lawmaker further said Obama’s recent move signified the fact that “the wall of distrust" between the two countries has grown taller.
The US move came despite a 1947 law that established the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, based on which the United States is obligated to issue visas to diplomats assigned there, even those it finds objectionable.
According to reports, Washington has decided to deny a visa to Abutalebi over his possible involvement in the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran during post-revolution incidents in 1979.
On November 4, 1979, and in less than a year after the victory of the Islamic Revolution that toppled a US-backed monarchy, Iranian university students that called themselves "students following the line of (the late) Imam (Khomeini)" seized the US embassy in Tehran.
The students justified the takeover by insisting that the compound had become a center of espionage and planning to overthrow the newly established Islamic system in Iran.
The students occupying the embassy later published documents proving that the compound was indeed engaged in plans and measures to overthrow the Islamic system.