The issue of holding those accountable who are responsible for the MH17 crash will be put on the agenda on the second anniversary of the tragedy, and at the next session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September.

According to UNIAN, this was announced by the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN, Volodymyr Yelchenko, during an interview with LB.ua.

“I think that all of the reports that were promised will be published during autumn. We will then again sit in New York and will discuss the following steps to be taken. I think that within the framework of the next session of the General Assembly, which is from September this year, we will deal with this issue again,” Yelchenko said.

He said that basically all of the negotiations on this issue are being held in the capitals of the countries involved.

“We are regularly holding talks on this issue here with, for example, the Permanent Representative of Netherlands, the Permanent Representative of Malaysia and Australia. Their decision is that we need to get an opinion from the capitals. We will then implement the second step here in the UN,” Yelchenko said.

He believes that there is a low chance of establishing an international tribunal through the UN to deal with those responsible for the crash. However, it remains on the agenda.

“As far as I know, the idea of establishing an international tribunal is not excluded and it is on the agenda. It takes serious effort to adopt such a resolution in the General Assembly as it requires two thirds of the vote. Even if such a resolution is approved, it will not be mandatory to implement it. This means that, ideally, we need a Security Council resolution, but you can clearly predict the outcome of this. It will be the same as a year ago during the first attempt when Russia vetoed the decision of the UN Security Council,” he said.

According to Yelchenko, by vetoing the idea of establishing an international tribunal, Russia not only prevents the criminals from being punished, but also clearly indicates who gave the order for this terrible attack to happen.

Yelchenko also rejected the possibility of a conscious delay by the Dutch side on the process of the criminal investigation.

“From the very beginning they said it would take much more time than the investigation of an ordinary crime. This is because investigators will actually have to work with evidence and people from more than five countries. That’s how it is unfortunately,” he explained.

Yelchenko referred to a similar case involving Libya who were accused of blowing up a plane over Scotland. Preparations took several years before the case was brought to court.

  MH17, UN

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