Tag Archives: U.N

Syria rebels guardedly welcome truce idea in ‘nightmarish’ Aleppo

A civilian removes the rubble in front of a damaged shop after an airstrike in the rebel held al-Saleheen neighborhood of Aleppo,

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The main umbrella group for the Syrian opposition on Friday cautiously welcomed a proposal for a weekly pause in fighting in Aleppo to allow aid to reach besieged areas, provided this would be monitored by the United Nations.

International concern has mounted over the fate of up to two million civilians in the city amid an intensification of fighting, with the World Food Programme warning on Friday that the situation was “inhumane, awful, disgusting, nightmarish”.

Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful military ally, said on Thursday it supported a longstanding U.N. call for a 48-hour truce each week in the city, and that it was ready to start the first one next week. Syria’s government has not yet commented on the idea.

“The High Negotiating Committee welcomes any initiative to staunch the blood of Syrians and to contribute to the arrival of aid to besieged areas,” said the statement from the umbrella group, which includes representatives of many rebel factions.

However, it hinged its welcome on a U.N. mechanism to monitor and enforce compliance of the truce. During a previous humanitarian pause this year, both sides complained the other had broken the truce as fighting escalated again.

Rebel groups, including one that was formally aligned with al Qaeda until last month, stormed a Syrian army complex in southwest Aleppo two weeks ago, breaking a siege on opposition-held parts of Aleppo and prompting fierce counter attacks.

INTENSE FIGHTING

A senior rebel commander said there was a “positive atmosphere” surrounding talk of a ceasefire. “But so far there are no details.”

Another rebel official, Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim group, said the opposition had expressed its willingness to cooperate with a truce, but Russian warplanes had been bombing the city heavily since the morning.

“The regime is trying to advance in the air force academy and elsewhere,” he added, referring to one of the areas that the rebels had captured.

Syrian warplanes had carried out 46 sorties in the last 24 hours, including strikes in Aleppo that destroyed a tank, a vehicle loaded with ammunition and three mortar emplacements, and killed dozens of rebel fighters, a military source said.

Continuing clashes between rebels and the Syrian army and allied militias were fiercest in the southwest of city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitor of the five-year-old civil war, said on Friday.

It added that air strikes and shelling in and around Aleppo had killed 422 civilians, including 142 children, this month. Pictures of a dazed, bloodied child pulled from the rubble after an air raid stirred international outrage on Thursday.

“We need a 48-hour pause, we need it now,” WFP spokeswoman Bettina Luescher told a briefing in Geneva on Friday. While the rebel advance this month opened a narrow corridor into opposition-held areas of Aleppo, access remains very limited and dangerous, meaning aid supplies are scarce.

“It’s crucially important that we go in there because people are absolutely desperate,” Luescher added. “From both sides, these sieges have to stop – it’s inhumane, awful, disgusting, nightmarish. Not necessarily U.N. words, but that’s what it is.”

(Reporting by Angus McDowall and Tom Perry in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Greece want to send thousands of migrants back to Turkey

People make their way inside the Moria holding centre for refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece wants to dramatically escalate returns of migrants to Turkey in the coming weeks under a European Union deal with Ankara, the migration minister said on Friday, amid criticism it has been too slow to process them.

The deal, which has been lambasted by rights groups and aid agencies, is aimed at closing off the main route into Europe, used by around a million refugees and migrants last year. It obliges Greece to return those who either do not apply for asylum or have their claims rejected.

Officials say about 8,400 migrants are currently on Greek islands, nearly all of whom have expressed interest in applying for asylum, overwhelming the system.

Greece says that, so far, it has deported 468 people back to Turkey, none of whom had requested asylum. Just two Syrian refugees have been ordered back from Greece to Turkey and they are appealing against the decision in the Greek courts.

Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas said Greece wanted to send thousands of migrants who arrived by crossing the Aegean Sea back to Turkey within weeks if they did not qualify for asylum in Greece.

“It would constitute failure if, within the next month-and-a-half, those who are obliged to leave the islands didn’t do so,” Mouzalas told Greek TV.

Asked how many people that amounted to, Mouzalas said “more than half” of the migrants currently there.

The minister’s comments came a day after parliament voted an amendment replacing two members of an asylum appeal board with judges.

Previously, the panel was made up of one civil servant, one member appointed by the national human rights committee, and a representative of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

EU officials had called on Greece to think about whether the committee should comprise civil society members rather than judges.

Unrest in Greek island camps boiled over earlier this month as migrants stranded there since March brawled with each other and set tents on fire.

Medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Friday it would reject all funding from the European Union and its member states in protest at the EU-Turkey deal, which its International Secretary General said was “jeopardizing the very concept of the refugee.”

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; editing by John Stonestreet)

Photograph captures week of tragedy in Mediterranean

A German rescuer from the humanitarian organisation Sea-Watch holds drowned migrant baby of the Libyan cost

By Steve Scherer

ROME (Reuters) – A photograph of a drowned migrant baby in the arms of a German rescuer was distributed on Monday by a humanitarian organization aiming to persuade European authorities to ensure safe passage to migrants, after hundreds are feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean last week.

The baby, who appears to be no more than a year old, was pulled from the sea on Friday after the capsizing of a wooden boat. Forty-five bodies arrived in the southern Italian port of Reggio Calabria on Sunday aboard an Italian navy ship, which picked up 135 survivors from the same incident.

German humanitarian organization Sea-Watch, operating a rescue boat in the sea between Libya and Italy, distributed the picture taken by a media production company on board and which showed a rescuer cradling the child like a sleeping baby.

In an email, the rescuer, who gave his name as Martin but did not want his family name published, said he had spotted the baby in the water “like a doll, arms outstretched”.

“I took hold of the forearm of the baby and pulled the light body protectively into my arms at once, as if it were still alive … It held out its arms with tiny fingers into the air, the sun shone into its bright, friendly but motionless eyes.”

The rescuer, a father of three and by profession a music therapist, added: “I began to sing to comfort myself and to give some kind of expression to this incomprehensible, heart-rending moment. Just six hours ago this child was alive.”

Like the photograph of the three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan lying lifeless on a Turkish beach last year, the image puts a human face on the more than 8,000 people who have died in the Mediterranean since the start of 2014.

Little is known about the child, who according to Sea-Watch was immediately handed over to the Italian navy. Rescuers could not confirm whether the partially clothed infant was a boy or a girl and it is not known whether the child’s mother or father are among the survivors.

Sea-Watch collected about 25 other bodies, including another child, according to testimony from the crew seen by Reuters. The Sea-Watch team said it unanimously decided to publish the photo.

“In the wake of the disastrous events it becomes obvious to the organizations on the ground that the calls by EU politicians to avoid further death at sea sum up to nothing more than lip service,” Sea-Watch said in a statement in English distributed along with the photograph.

“If we do not want to see such pictures we have to stop producing them,” Sea-Watch said, calling for Europe to allow migrants safe and legal passage as a way of shutting down people smuggling and further tragedies.

At least 700 migrants may have died at sea this past week in the busiest week of migrant crossings from Libya towards Italy this year, the UN Refugee agency said on Sunday.

The boat carrying the baby left the shores of Libya near Sabratha late on Thursday, and then began to take on water, according to accounts by survivors collected by Save the Children on Sunday. Hundreds were on board when it capsized, the survivors said.

(Editing and additional reporting by Mark John in London)

U.N. urges Greece to improve poor living conditions for refugees

A refugee woman hangs clothes to dry at the sun after heavy rainfall at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees near the village

ENEVA (Reuters) – Refugees in some sites in Greece are cramped in “sub-standard conditions” in poorly ventilated “derelict warehouses and factories”, with insufficient food, water, toilets and showers, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.

“We urge the Greek authorities, with the financial support provided by the European Union, to find better alternatives quickly,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a briefing.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Iraq forces keep up shelling Falluja, U.N. concern mounts for civilians

Members of the Iraqi security forces load a machine gun near Falluja, Iraq, May 23, 2016.

By Ahmed Rasheed and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces shelled Islamic State targets in Falluja on Tuesday, the second day of an assault to retake the militant stronghold just west of Baghdad, as international concern mounted for the security of civilians.

Residents in the city, 50 km (30 miles) from the capital, reported sporadic shelling around the city centre, but said it was less intense than on Monday.

“No one can leave. It’s dangerous. There are snipers everywhere along the exit routes,” one resident told Reuters by internet.

About 100,000 civilians are estimated to be in Falluja which, in January 2014, became the first Iraqi city to be captured by Islamic State, six months before the group declared its caliphate. The population was three times bigger before the war.

The Iraqi military said it had dislodged the militants from Garma, a village to the east, overnight. No casualties were reported by the army or the city’s main hospital. On Monday, eight civilians and three militants were killed, and 25 people wounded, 20 of them civilians, according to the hospital.

CIVILIANS

The U.S.-led coalition “is providing air power to support the Iraqi government forces in Falluja,” its spokesman, U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren, told Reuters by phone.

The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross issued statements on Monday evening appealing for the warring parties to protect civilians, who have limited access to food, water and healthcare and who now risk being used as human shields.

Resourceful residents have begun appropriating solar panels affixed to street lights to generate power in their homes.

Even the militants have had to scrounge and conserve supplies, collecting plastic objects to turn into makeshift fuel and conducting patrols on bicycle, residents told Reuters.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the armed forces had been “instructed to preserve the lives of citizens in Falluja and protect public and private property.”

“Those who cannot take the exit routes, they can stay at home and not move,” he added in comments aired by state Iraqi TV while on visit to the field command center near Falluja.

The Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq, a hardline political organisation formed in 2003 to represent minority Sunnis, on Monday condemned the campaign as “an unjust aggression, a reflection of the vengeful spirit that the forces of evil harbour against this city”.

It said in a statement nearly 10,000 residents had been killed or wounded by government shelling over the past two years, which Reuters could not verify, and warned any victory would be “illusory”.

The military campaign could take “many weeks, if not longer”, predicted Ranj Alaaldin, an Iraq expert at the London School of Economics, due to lingering support for Islamic State among many residents who may still prefer the militants to a Baghdad government long perceived as sectarian and repressive.

In a nod to local sensitivities, Iraqi officials say Shi’ite militias, grouped under a loose government umbrella to help boost the army and police following partial collapses since 2014, would be restricted to operating outside the city limits.

Abadi ordered the offensive despite concerns that it could divert resources from a push later this year to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s de facto capital in Iraq.

“You do not need Falluja in order to get Mosul,” Warren, the anti-IS coalition spokesman, said in a phone interview at the weekend.

A series of bombings that killed more than 150 people in one week in Baghdad, the highest death toll so far this year. cranked up the pressure on Abadi to do something about the city seen by many Shi’ite politicians as an irredeemable bulwark of Sunni Muslim militancy.

“The intelligence indicates that this recent IS resurgence in Baghdad through some sleeper cells originated from Falluja,” said senior lawmaker and former national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie. “Falluja is too close to Baghdad.”

Reuters could not independently verify that claim and the authorities have not publicly made such statements.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Cambodians gather to pray for ‘killing fields’ dead

A man prays at the Choeung Ek memorial during the annual "Day of Anger" in Phnom Penh

(Reuters) – Hundreds of people gathered on Friday at one of Cambodia’s infamous killing fields to remember the two million people who died under the communist Khmer Rouge regime.

Officials and relatives laid flowers and gave offerings on the “Day of Remembrance”, once known as the “Day of Hatred”, and students performed a re-enactment of Khmer Rouge soldiers taking prisoners.

The 1975-79 ultra-Maoist regime killed a fifth of the population through execution, torture and starvation in a bid to turn Cambodia into a communist state. Dictator Pol Pot was toppled from power when Vietnam invaded the country in 1979.

“During my prayers, I said to those who were killed that nowadays the government cooperates with the Khmer Rouge court to try to find justice for all the victims so they might rest in peace,” Khmer Rouge era survivor Yi Kim Seur said at Choueung Ek, about 15 km (9 miles) outside the capital, Phnom Penh.

A hybrid U.N.-Cambodian tribunal has reached verdicts in three high-profile cases since it was set up almost a decade ago but new cases have faced resistance.

Kaing Guek Eav, alias “Duch”, the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison where as many as 14,000 people were executed, received a life sentence in 2010.

Senior Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan have also been handed life sentences.

(Editing by Patrick Johnston and Clarence Fernandez)

World must tackle ‘once in a generation’ refugee crisis

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras meets United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Special Envoy Angelina Jolie at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, March 16, 2016.

By Lin Taylor

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Global leaders must come together to tackle a ‘once-in-a-generation’ migrant crisis, said U.N. special envoy Angelina Jolie, or risk greater instability that could drive more refugees to Europe.

The United Nations and the declaration of human rights were among the world-changing outcomes of the global refugee crisis after World War Two, Jolie said, adding that the international community is now at a similar pivotal moment.

“I believe this is again that once-in-a-generation moment when nations have to pull together,” the Hollywood actress and director told the BBC.

“How we respond will determine whether we create a more stable world, or face decades of far greater instability.”

Jolie said inaction or uncoordinated efforts that did not address the underlying causes of the crisis would only lead to more conflict and displacement.

“If these things continue to happen, there will be further displacement and more people on the borders of Europe and elsewhere,” she said.

Europe is grappling with its largest migration wave since World War Two, as a traditional flow of migrants from Africa is compounded by refugees fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and South Asia.

The U.N. refugee agency has said the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide was likely to have “far surpassed” a record 60 million in 2015, including 20 million refugees, driven by the Syrian war and other drawn-out conflicts.

The Oscar-winning actress argued against closing borders to refugees and migrants.

“If your neighbor’s house is on fire you are not safe if you lock your doors. Isolationism is not strength,” she said.

European Union leaders, alarmed by an influx of one million refugees and migrants into the bloc of 500 million people, struck an accord with Turkey in March that would grant Ankara more money to keep Syrian refugees on its territory.

The deal sealed off the main route by which a million migrants crossed the Aegean into Greece last year, but some believe new routes will develop through Bulgaria or Albania as Mediterranean crossings to Italy from Libya resume.

Jolie, special envoy for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said she was disappointed in some politicians for fear-mongering and a “race to the bottom” approach to the refugee crisis.

She said it has led to “countries competing to be the toughest, in the hope of protecting themselves whatever the cost… and despite their international responsibilities.”

When asked about Republican Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential campaign, Jolie said it was divisive.

“America is built on freedom of religion so it’s hard to hear that this is coming from someone who is pressing to be president.”

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news, conflicts, land rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women’s rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

U.N. investigators tell states to stop Syria war crimes

Journalists and civilians stand near the damage after rockets fired by insurgents hit the al-Dabit maternity clinic in government-held

GENEVA (Reuters) – States backing Syria’s peace process must stop the warring parties from attacking unlawful targets such as hospitals and other civilian sites, U.N. war crimes investigators said in a statement on Wednesday.

Air strikes, shelling and rocket fire had been consistently used in recent attacks on civilian areas, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said in a statement.

“Failure to respect the laws of war must have consequences for the perpetrators,” its chairman, Paulo Pinheiro, said.

“Until the culture of impunity is uprooted, civilians will continue to be targeted, victimized and brutally killed.”

International law requires all parties to the conflict to distinguish between lawful and unlawful targets, but that distinction had been ignored and some recent attacks had been war crimes, the statement said.

It cited an attack on the al-Quds hospital in Aleppo governorate on April 27 and other attacks on nearby medical facilities, and air strikes on markets, bakeries and a water station, as well as the May 5 attack on a refugee camp in Idlib.

Those attacks all happened after a two-month ceasefire, brokered by Russia and the United states, unraveled, and Syrian government forces said they would launch an assault to recapture rebel-held areas of Aleppo.

The statement did not explicitly attribute blame for attacks on civilians, but only Syria’s government and its ally Russia are using aircraft in the conflict.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said last week that initial reports suggested Syrian government aircraft were responsible for the attack on the refugee camp in Idlib governorate, which killed about 30 people. Syria’s military said they had not targeted the camp.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Talks closer to a Syrian truce to Aleppo

US Secretary of State Kerry gestures next to UN Special Envoy on Syria de Mistura during a news conference in Geneva

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Lesley Wroughton

AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday talks were closer to extending a Syrian truce to Aleppo, the divided northern city where a sharp escalation of violence in recent weeks has torpedoed peace talks.

Kerry was in Geneva for talks with other dignitaries to try to revive the first major ceasefire of the five-year Syrian war, which was put in place in February with U.S. and Russian backing but has since all but collapsed.

Syria announced temporary local truces in other areas last week but has so far failed to extend them to Aleppo, where government air strikes and rebel shelling have killed hundreds of civilians in the past week, including more than 50 people in a hospital that rebels say was deliberately targeted.

The Aleppo fighting threatens to wreck the first peace talks involving the warring parties, which are due to resume at an unspecified date after breaking up in April when the opposition delegation walked out in anger.

“We’re getting closer to a place of understanding, but we have some work to do, and that’s why we’re here,” Kerry said at the start of a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.

After meeting Jubeir and U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, Kerry said he hoped for more clarity in the next day or so on restoring the nationwide ceasefire. The United States and Russia had agreed to keep extra staff in Geneva to work on it.

“Both sides, the opposition and the regime, have contributed to this chaos, and we are working over the next hours intensely in order to try to restore the cessation of hostilities,” Kerry said. De Mistura said he would travel to Moscow for talks.

The civil war in Syria has killed hundred of thousands of people, driven millions from their homes, created the world’s worst refugee crisis and provided a base for Islamic State militants who have launched attacks elsewhere.

The fighting has drawn in global powers and regional states, while all diplomatic efforts to resolve it have foundered over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad, who refuses to accept opposition demands that he leave power.

The United States and Russia have taken the leading roles in the latest diplomatic initiative, which began after Moscow joined the war last year with an air campaign that tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad, its ally.

So far, Syria has announced a “regime of calm” — a temporary local truce — in the Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus and the countryside of northern Latakia province, from Saturday morning. The Latakia truce was for three days and the Ghouta truce, initially for 24 hours, was also extended by another 48.

Both are areas where there has been heavy fighting, but Aleppo remains the biggest prize for Assad’s forces, who are hoping to take full control of the city, Syria’s largest before the war. The nearby countryside includes the last strip of the Syria-Turkish border in the hands of Arab Sunni rebels.

A Russian military official, General Sergei Kuralenko, said talks were under way on extending the regime of calm to Aleppo.

CIVILIANS KILLED

The opposition accuses the government of deliberately targeting civilians in rebel held parts of Aleppo to drive them out, and says the world must do more to force Damascus to halt air strikes.

For its part, the government says rebels have been heavily shelling government-held areas, proving that they are receiving more sophisticated weaponry from their foreign supporters, which include Arab states and Turkey.

A British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has reported scores of civilians killed on both sides, although more in rebel-held territory.

Syrian state television said on Monday that a missile had hit the surroundings of Aleppo University Medical Hospital, and several civilians were injured by rebel mortar attacks on the residential area of Jamiyat Hay al Zahra in western Aleppo.

The rebel-held local council of Aleppo city announced a state of emergency in areas it runs due to the intense bombardment. About 350,000-400,000 people are believed to remain in rebel-held parts of what was once a city of 2 million.

Mohammad Muaz Abu Saleh, a senior councillor in the rebel Aleppo governate council, said residents were not abandoning opposition-held areas, despite the intense bombardment.

“Those who wanted to leave Aleppo have fled,” he said. Those who have stayed behind “have decided to stay under all circumstances of shelling and siege. Aleppo will remain populated with its people not leaving.”

Amar al-Absi, a resident of a rebel-held area, said: “There was heavy shelling throughout the night. In my neighborhood, Salah al-Deen, a missile hit a building that was empty and it was leveled but there were no casualties.”

In the countryside north of Aleppo, other rebel groups have been fighting against Islamic State fighters, who are not party to any ceasefire.

Amaq, a news agency affiliated to Islamic State, said the militants had gained control of the villages of Doudayan, Tel Shaer and Iykda from rival rebels in the northern Aleppo area near the border with Turkey.

They said they were able cut the supply routes of other rebels in the area, despite Turkish artillery shelling to aid the rebels against Islamic State.

The Observatory said the militants had staged a counterattack to regain ground lost from other rebels in to-and-fro fighting that has seen no major gains for any side.

Turkey said it had shelled Islamic State positions across the border and attacked them with drones on Sunday, killing 34 militants in retaliation for cross-border strikes. The death toll could not be confirmed.

Turkey, a NATO ally, is part of a U.S.-led coalition launching air strikes against Islamic State, but is also strongly opposed to the main Kurdish militia in Syria, Washington’s closest ally on the ground. It is one of the leading opponents of Assad and backers of rebels opposed to him.

Another major supporter of the rebels is Saudi Arabia, whose Foreign Minister Jubeir blamed the latest escalation on the government, condemned it as a “violation of all humanitarian laws” and called for Assad to step down.

“He can leave through a political process, which we hope he will do, or he will be removed by force,” Jubeir said alongside Kerry.

(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Iran asks U.N. chief to intervene with U.S. after court ruling

United Nations Secretary General Ban arrives to a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif at U.N. headquarters in New York

By Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iran asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday to convince the United States to stop violating state immunity after the top U.S. court ruled that $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be paid to American victims of attacks blamed on Tehran.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote to Ban a week after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, calling on the Secretary-General to use his “good offices in order to induce the U.S. Government to adhere to its international obligations.”

Zarif’s appeal comes amid increasing Iranian frustration at what they say is the failure of the United States to keep its promises regarding sanctions relief agreed under an historic nuclear deal struck last year by Tehran and six world powers.

In the letter, released by the Iranian U.N. mission, Zarif asked Ban to help secure the release of frozen Iranian assets in U.S. banks and persuade Washington to stop interfering with Iran’s international commercial and financial transactions.

“The U.S Executive branch illegally freezes Iranian national assets; the U.S Legislative branch legislates to pave the ground for their illicit seizures; and the U.S Judicial branch issues rulings to confiscate Iranian assets without any base in law or fact,” Zarif said.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top adviser Ali Akbar Velayati was quoted by Iranian state media as saying that “Iran will never abandon its right and will take any necessary action to stop such an international theft.”

“This money belongs to Iran,” he said.

Ban’s spokesman and the U.S. mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter or the accusations made against the United States.

Zarif told Ban he wanted to “alert you and through you the U.N. general membership about the catastrophic implications of the U.S. blatant disrespect for state immunity, which will cause systematic erosion of this fundamental principle.”

The U.S. Supreme Court found that the U.S. Congress did not usurp the authority of American courts by passing a 2012 law stating that Iran’s frozen funds should go toward satisfying a $2.65 billion judgment won by the U.S. families against Iran in U.S. federal court in 2007.

“It is in fact the United States that must pay long overdue reparations to the Iranian people for its persistent hostile policies,” Zarif wrote, citing incidents including the shooting of an Iranian civil airliner in 1988.

Last week Zarif met several times with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in New York to discuss Iranian problems accessing international financial markets.

Tehran has called on the United States to do more to remove obstacles to the banking sector so that businesses feel comfortable investing in Iran without fear of penalties.

Some hardline lawmakers have called on the government of President Hassan Rouhani to consider the ruling a violation of the nuclear deal reached with the United States and other major powers in 2015.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara)