Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said Wednesday that the US authorities refused to provide a Palestinian delegation of six experts travel visas to attend an important meeting that was held at the UN headquarters in New York.
Mansour told journalists that Israel also “complicated the matter” by refusing to allow several members of the delegation to travel from Ramallah to Jerusalem where the US Consulate is located to check on their visas.
He said such measure violated the UN agreement with the United States as host country of the world organization which requires the US to facilitate UN work and allow delegates to attend UN meetings.
Mansour said he would send a letter of protest in this regard to the General Assembly committee dealing with host country relations.
The US mission said it was looking into the complaint but Israel’s UN mission did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The high-level meeting was hearing what nearly 50 countries were doing to implement the UN goals to combat poverty promote development and gender equality and preserve the environment by 2030.
Since the experts failed to attend the meeting Mansour said he and his team “were able to improvise” and presented the Palestinian report on Tuesday. He said it “received a long applause from the participants.”
