VILNIUS (Sputnik) — Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite will suggest depriving UN Security Council (UNSC) permanent members of their veto powers in extreme cases at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, her press service said.
Grybauskaite intends to draw the attention of the world leaders "to the vetoed justice and the need for changes in the work of the UN Security Council, namely by abolition of the veto in cases of genocide, atrocities, crimes against humanity and war crimes," the president's press service said.
In July, Malaysia submitted a draft resolution to the UNSC calling for the creation of an independent UN tribunal to identify and prosecute those responsible for the MH17 disaster. Russia vetoed the proposal, saying that the tribunal might be aimed at concealing failures in the investigation and insisting that the official report into the crash, due in October, must be released before any further decisions could be made.
Commenting on this claim, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said that stripping the UN Security Council’s five permanent members of their power to veto would destroy the well-designed system of checks-and-balances.