Цывкунова Интернатионал Лаw Учебно-методическое пособие 2010
.pdf3. The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
Article 23
1.The sending State and the head of the mission shall be exempt from all national, regional or municipal dues and taxes in respect of the premises of the mission, whether owned or leased, other than such as represent payment for specific services rendered.
2.The exemption from taxation referred to in this Article shall not apply to such dues and taxes payable under the law of the receiving State by persons contracting with the sending State or the head of the mission.
Article 24
The archives and documents of the mission shall be inviolable at any time and wherever they may be.
Article 25
The receiving State shall accord full facilities for the performance of the functions of the mission.
Article 26
Subject to its laws and regulations concerning zones entry into which is prohibited or regulated for reasons of national security, the receiving State shall ensure to all members of the mission freedom of movement and travel in its territory.
Article 27
1. The receiving State shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes. In communicating with the Government and the other missions and consulates of the sending State, wherever situated, the mission may employ all appropriate means, including diplomatic couriers and messages in code or cipher. However, the mission may install and use a wireless transmitter only with the consent of the receiving State.
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2.The official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable. Official correspondence means all correspondence relating to the mission and its functions.
3.The diplomatic bag shall not be opened or detained.
4.The packages constituting the diplomatic bag must bear visible external marks of their character and may contain only diplomatic documents or articles intended for official use.
5.The diplomatic courier, who shall be provided with an official document indicating his status and the number of packages constituting the diplomatic bag, shall be protected by the receiving State in the performance of his functions. He shall enjoy personal inviolability and shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention.
6.The sending State or the mission may designate diplomatic couriers ad hoc. In such cases the provisions of paragraph 5 of this Article shall also apply, except that the immunities therein mentioned shall cease to apply when such a courier has delivered to the consignee the diplomatic bag in his charge.
7.A diplomatic bag may be entrusted to the captain of a commercial aircraft scheduled to land at an authorized port of entry. He shall be provided with an official document indicating the number of packages constituting the bag but he shall not be considered to be a diplomatic courier. The mission may send one of its members to take possession of the diplomatic bag directly and freely from the captain of the aircraft.
Article 28
The fees and charges levied by the mission in the course of its official duties shall be exempt from all dues and taxes.
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Task 4. Render the following passage into English. Give your own estimation of the incident referring to the appropriate articles of the VCDR.
31 октября 1997 г. сотрудниками нью-йоркской полиции был спровоцирован дипломатический инцидент. Постоянный представитель Российской Федерации в ООН С.В. Лавров был на время лишен физической возможности на своем служебном автомобиле проехать к зданию ООН, куда он направлялся для выполнения своей официальной миссии – участия в заседании Совета Безопасности этой организации.
В связи с этим инцидентом МИД России заявил временному поверенному в делах США в Москве, что российская сторона возмущена вторжением американских полицейских в автомашину указанного дипломата (у водителя был отнят ключ зажигания) и серьезно обеспокоена бездеятельностью компетентных официальных властей США, фактически попустительствующих подобным преследованиям российских представителей. Было также заявлено, что из происшедшего может сложиться впечатление, что грубое нарушение Венской конвенции о дипломатических сношениях 1961 г. совершено в Нью-Йорке сознательно, причем Государственный департамент США делает вид, что ничего заслуживающего внимания с его стороны не происходит.
International Relations: News
Britain and Iran's fraught history
(P. Reynolds, World affairs correspondent, BBC News, June 2009)
The mutual expulsion of diplomats by Iran and Britain shows that relations between these two old antagonists are alive and bad. The expulsions started on the Iranian side when two British diplomats were expelled with the usual claim of "activities incompatible with their status".
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This often means spying but it could mean anything and the Iranians did not explain. More out of routine than anger, Britain retaliated in kind.
It all followed the speech last Friday by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who called Britain the most "evil" of the "hungry wolves in ambush" on Iran. The expulsions tell us quite a bit about the Iranian government - how paranoiac it remains and how ready to blame foreigners for its troubles.
'Devious'
But why has it singled out Britain? There is a history to this.
"There is a deep-rooted belief in Iran that Britain is always up to something, is never passive and always devious," said Rosemary Hollis, Middle East analyst at City University in London. "I meet it all the time with Iranians. It is a combination of history and current British involvement with Iran. One issue is the setting up of the BBC Persian TV channel. Another is the presence in the UK of the Iranian opposition group MKO." (The MKO is the People's Mujahedin Organisation, which was taken off the list of terrorist groups by the EU in January.)
"But it is also possible that the Iranians are labelling the Brits as meddlers in order to avoid attacking the United States and to leave the door open to Obama," Ms Hollis adds. US President Barack Obama has made an offer of talks with Iran to which Iran has not yet formally responded.
Humiliation
As for the history, it depends on how far back you want to go. You could go back to 1813 and the Treaty of Gulistan, under which Persia was forced to concede territory to Russia. The treaty was put together by British diplomat Sir Gore Ouseley and is regarded as a humiliation in Iran. The myth - or reality - of the devious British was established.
Britain was also instrumental in setting Iran's borders with India in the 1860s. Then in the 1920s, British forces in Iran under General Edmund
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Ironside (later British land forces commander in World War II after Dunkirk) helped put Reza Shah on the Peacock throne. His son was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979, so there is a direct link back to British actions decades ago.
'Great Satan'
In more modern times, the event that really led to the mistrust of Britain - and the US - was the coup against the elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953. Mossadeq had wanted to nationalise the AngloIranian Oil Company in which the British had a majority share. The British and Americans organised a coup, put Mossadeq under house arrest and placed Pahlavi firmly in control as Shah.
After the Shah himself was removed, the Islamic revolutionaries turned their attention more to the "Great Satan", the US, than the UK. Hostages were taken at the US embassy and President Carter launched a disastrous operation to try to free them. There followed many barren years.
There have been brief rapprochements now and then. An alliance of convenience between the Reagan administration and Iran saw the US get arms to Iran in exchange for the freeing of western hostages in Lebanon. During the Iran-Iraq war, which the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein started, western support for Iraq was deeply resented in Iran.
Business as usual
More recently, Iran released 15 Royal Navy personnel after seizing them in the Gulf. But that turned out to be a gesture not a new policy of friendship. The British Museum even tried to do its bit with an exhibition this year about the reign of Shah Abbas in the 16th and 17th Centuries, and for which it got the cooperation of the Iranian authorities.
But nothing has ever really been resolved and the antagonism brought about by suspicions surrounding Iran's nuclear programme and the sanctions imposed by the Security Council (pressed for by the US and UK) only made relations more tense.
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It is ironic that in the current crisis, the British government tried to keep a low profile, not wanting its "historical baggage", as one official put it, to be used as an excuse by Iran to blame it for interference. This has happened anyway. It is business as usual.
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(1) Focus on Definitions. Find in the article the words that mean the following:
•to give something (e.g. territory) to someone as a right or privilege, often unwillingly;
•to force a foreigner to leave a country, especially because they have broken the law or for political reasons;
•to do something bad to someone because they have done something bad to you;
•someone who is kept as a prisoner by an enemy so that the other side will do what the enemy demands.
(2)What is so ‘fraught’ about the relations between Britain and Iran? Provide your comments on the issue in question.
Famous quotations
•An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. (Henry Wotton, 1568-1639, an English poet, diplomat.)
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Unit V. Section 4
Privileges and Immunities enjoyed by Diplomatic Agents
Task 1. Read the text and outline the privileges and immunities enjoyed by diplomatic agents.
International customary law grants a host of privileges and immunities to diplomatic agents. They are laid down in the VCDR, Articles 29-39. Personal immunities accorded to diplomatic agents comprise the following:
(1) Personal inviolability. Immunity from arrest and detention. If a diplomatic agent engages in criminal activity, the host State may notify the sending State that he or she is persona non grata.
Article 29
The person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable. He shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention. The receiving State shall treat him with due respect and shall take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on his person, freedom or dignity.
(2)Immunity from criminal jurisdiction.
(3)Immunity from civil and administrative jurisdiction of the receiving State.
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Article 31
1.A diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State. He shall also enjoy immunity from its civil and administrative jurisdiction, except in the case of:
(a)a real action relating to private immovable property situated in the territory of the receiving State, unless he holds it on behalf of the sending State for the purposes of the mission;
(b)an action relating to succession in which the diplomatic agent is involved as executor, administrator, heir or legatee as a private person and not on behalf of the sending State;
(c)an action relating to any professional or commercial activity exercised by the diplomatic agent in the receiving State outside his official functions.
2.A diplomatic agent is not obliged to give evidence as a witness.
3.No measures of execution may be taken in respect of a diplomatic agent except in the cases coming under sub-paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of paragraph 1 of this Article, and provided that the measures concerned can be taken without infringing the inviolability of his person or of his residence.
4.The immunity of a diplomatic agent from the jurisdiction of the receiving State does not exempt him from the jurisdiction of the sending State.
However, diplomatic agents are not exempt from administrative or civil proceedings whenever they voluntarily submit to jurisdiction; for instance, after initiating proceedings before a local court, thus waiving their right to immunity from jurisdiction.
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(4) Inviolability of the diplomatic agent’s private residence, papers, correspondence, and property.
Article 30
1.The private residence of a diplomatic agent shall enjoy the same inviolability and protection as the premises of the mission.
2.His papers, correspondence and, except as provided in paragraph 3 of Article 31, his property, shall likewise enjoy inviolability
(5) Exemption from all dues and taxes, personal or real, national, regional, or municipal.
Article 34
A diplomatic agent shall be exempt from all dues and taxes, personal or real, national, regional or municipal, except:
(a)indirect taxes of a kind which are normally incorporated in the price of goods or services;
(b)dues and taxes on private immovable property situated in the territory of the receiving State, unless he holds it on behalf of the sending State for the purposes of the mission;
(c)estate, succession or inheritance duties levied by the receiving State, subject to the provisions of paragraph 4 of Article 39;
(d)dues and taxes on private income having its source in the receiving State and capital taxes on investments made in commercial undertakings in the receiving State;
(e)charges levied for specific services rendered;
(f)registration, court or record fees, mortgage dues and stamp duty, with respect to immovable property, subject to the provisions of Article 23.
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Task 2. Speak about the duties of diplomatic agents towards the receiving State and termination of their functions using the information below. Find in the text the English equivalents for the following word combinations:
•услуга за услугу, компенсация, в обмен на …;
•вмешиваться во внутренние дела государства;
•быть несовместимым с чем-либо;
•разрыв дипломатических отношений;
•разрывать дипломатические отношения;
•вверять охрану помещений представительства третьему государству;
•в частности.
It is important to emphasize that the rights and privileges are not granted for the personal benefit of the individuals concerned, but to ensure the efficient performance of the functions of the diplomatic mission.
By way of quid pro quo for the enjoyment of privileges and immunities, members of diplomatic missions owe certain duties towards the receiving State. These are:
(a)the duty to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State (Article 41(1));
(b)the duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of the receiving State (Article 41(1));
(c)all official business of the communication by the mission with the receiving State should be through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the receiving State, or with such other ministries as may be agreed (Article 41(2));
(d)the premises of the mission must be not be used in any manner incompatible with the functions of the mission (Article 41(3));
(e)a diplomatic agent must not carry out any professional or commercial activity for personal profit in the receiving State (Article 42).
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