NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 15 – The Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani will attend the United Nations meetings convened between Feb. 22 and 24 on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “My presence in New York one year after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is a clear signal of support for the role the UN is playing in this crisis, both with the General Assembly’s condemnation of Russian aggression and through Secretary General Guterres’ action on the agreement on the export of grain from the Black Sea,” Tajani said in an interview with the online newspaper “La Voce di New York.”
Two major events are on the agenda: a special session of the General Assembly, whose outcome would be a resolution for peace with the aim of further isolating Russia, and a commemoration in the Security Council on February 24, the day when, a year ago, the war began. “Italy has always played a leading role in supporting multilateralism. We are the leading contributor of Blue Helmets among Western countries and among the main contributors to the UN budget. We also promote a reform of the Security Council to make it more representative, democratic, transparent, accountable and effective in responding to international crises,” added Tajani, the first member of the center-right Giorgia Meloni’s government to travel to the United States.
The draft resolution on the table in the Assembly stresses the need for a peace capable of guaranteeing the “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” It is a less detailed text than the 10-point peace plan points announced in November by President Volodymyr Zelensky in an attempt to gain as much support as possible, it reiterates iearlier demand that Russia “withdraw immediately, completely and unconditionally all its military forces.”
Speaking with the Italian daily ‘La Repubblica’, Tajani reiterated that “Italy wants peace” and peace “can only be achieved by continuing to arm Kiev. “Everything must be done so that the final solution is not a surrender to the Russians,” he said. And he told TG1 that “Italy is not at war with Russia, but only defends international law and Ukraine’s right to be independent.”
“We have helped not only with military instruments this country, also with a lot of humanitarian aid, including 100 tons of electrical equipment to allow Ukrainian technicians to restore the power grid so badly hit by Russian bombing. Then,” he
continued, “we made two proposals to start the dialogue: to create a free zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant so that not even by accident it could be hit, therefore avoiding a nuclear disaster. We are very much supporting the UN action against nuclear expansion, and I think that would already be one choice in favor of dialogue and peace. Another would be to strengthen the channels to send grain from Ukraine to the poorest countries, I’m thinking of Africa in particular, also to contain social crises that in turn result in new migratory flows.” (@OnuItalia)