TASS- The UN Secretariat has no authority to investigate claims of purported Iranian arms supplies to Yemeni rebels, voiced recently by the United States and other countries, Russia�s deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, said.

On December 14, the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, presented in Washington fragments of a missile, reportedly launched by Yemen�s Houthi rebels toward the Riyadh airport and shot down by Saudi missile defenses. She asserted that the missile was manufactured in Iran. During the UN Security Council session on Tuesday, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said the Secretariat was analyzing this information, but has so far failed to come to any conclusion regarding the missile�s origin.

Speaking at the UN Security Council meeting on implementing Resolution 2231, adopted in support of the nuclear deal with Iran, the Russian diplomat said the UN had "neither credentials, nor expertise" to investigate such claims.

"Measures of this kind, taken without prior approval by the UN Security Council, are illegitimate, and information obtained as a result cannot be viewed as credible and must not be included into a report," Safronkov said.

He also stressed that UN Secretary General Antonio Gutterres� report on resolution 2234 "must not contain any information from open-access sources, as well references to unchecked or inherently unverifiable data, provided by separate nations."

"Information of this kind must be forwarded to the UN SC, which is authorized to decide on further steps, including to order an investigation. Unilateral steps in this direction cannot be viewed as legitimate," the Russian diplomat said.