Russia omits own UN envoy's Iraq remarks from transcript

By Mustafa Caglayan

NEW YORK

Russia's Permanent Mission to the United Nations has removed its ambassador's remarks from the official transcript about why Moscow raised a row between Iraq and Turkey in the UN Security Council.

At a press conference Tuesday, following a closed-door meeting of the Security Council on the deployment of Turkish troops in northern Iraq, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin was asked why he raised the issue and whether Iraq made a request that the issue be taken up in the Council.

"Come on! They sent a letter to the Security Council. This is something which triggered our request to hold informal consultations. There were complaints to the Security Council," he responded.

His remarks, however, did not make it into the official transcript, which was published on the mission's website.

Instead, the transcript quotes only the ambassador as saying that “Iraq did complain! There were public complains [sic] by the Prime-Minister of Iraq and other officials so it was not our invention."

Churkin’s Iraqi counterpart, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, also denied Tuesday that his country had sent a letter to the 15-member council.

"We are working on this bilaterally between Baghdad and Ankara, and when we need, we have letters available to the Security Council, but they have not been issued by Baghdad yet," he said, adding that the letter Churkin referred to might be a letter sent by Iraq on June 25, 2014.

"We have not yet escalated it to the Security Council," he said.

"For us what is helpful is the bilateral discussion going on right now between Baghdad and Ankara, and it is going extremely well," he added.

The Russian mission was not immediately available for comment.

Tuesday's closed-door Security Council consultations were called by Russia in response to a diplomatic spat between Baghdad and Ankara following the posting of Turkish military trainers to Bashiqa, near Mosul, last week.