PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR HIGH-LEVEL EVENT ON FINANCING FOR DEVELOPMENT ELECTS 12 MEMBERS OF 15-MEMBER BUREAU

Press Release
DEV/2229

PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR HIGH-LEVEL EVENT ON FINANCING FOR DEVELOPMENT ELECTS 12 MEMBERS OF 15-MEMBER BUREAU

Asian Group Asks for More Time to Agree On Candidates; President Expresses Disappointment at Delay

The Preparatory Committee for the High-level International Intergovernmental Event on Financing for Development, at its organizational session, this afternoon elected 12 members of its 15-member Bureau, with the Asian Group still to nominate three candidates. The meeting was subsequently suspended to allow the Asian Group more time to deliberate.

Opening the session, the President of the General Assembly, Theo-Ben Gurirab (Namibia), recalled the work done thus far in preparing for the 2001 event, but acknowledged that there had been limited progress on some critical procedural issues, despite the universal importance given to the preparatory process.

The President said the appointment of the Bureau and the two co-Chairpersons was pressing, because of the role everyone was expected to play in further consultations with all relevant stakeholders regarding the modalities of their participation in both the preparatory process and the final event. This applied, in particular, to the possibility of creating a joint task force which would be a central element in the process and, therefore, needed to be established as soon as possible to enable work to proceed.

Assembly resolution A/54/196 also called upon the Bureau to undertake consultations with all other relevant stakeholders, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and to submit proposals to the resumed organizational session in March, the President said. Clearly, time was pressing, and “it would be an inauspicious start to this important process if there were further slippage in a time table that we ourselves set only six weeks ago”. (For the full statement, see Press Release GA/SM/151 issued today.)

Elected, by acclamation, to the Bureau were: Hazem Fahmy (Egypt), Kwabena Osei-Danquah (Ghana), and Mubarak Hussein Rahmtalla (Sudan) for the African States; Ivan Nimac (Croatia), Jana Simonova (Czech Republic), and Naste Calovski (The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) for the Eastern European States; Gert Rosenthal (Guatemala), Sonia Lenoce-Carryl (Saint Lucia), and Daul Matute (Peru) for the Latin American and Caribbean States; and Jorgen Boger (Denmark), Ruth Jacoby (Sweden), and Michael Gallagher (United States) for the Western European and Other States.

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Addressing the Committee, the Chairman of the Asian Group appealed for more time to come up with an agreed list. He said his Group should be able to forward the names within a week.

The Assembly President expressed his personal disappointment at the delay, inasmuch as the Assembly resolution had called for the exercise to be completed in January. He recalled that in meetings with the Chairmen of the regional groups, he had called for urgency and speed. He had hoped, he said, to complete the election of the Bureau at this sitting and had not contemplated calling another meeting for that purpose.

In adopting resolution 54/196, the Assembly decided to convene, in 2001, a high-level intergovernmental event of political decision-makers on financing for development, which would address national, international and systemic issues relating to financing for development in a holistic manner in the context of globalization and interdependence, and, by so doing, address development through the perspective of finance. It decided to establish an intergovernmental preparatory committee, open to all States, to carry out the substantive preparations for the event. In that connection, it decided to constitute a Bureau of the Preparatory Committee, consisting of 15 representatives of Member States, selected according to the principle of equitable geographical representation, to be presided over by two co-Chairmen.

Two documents before the Preparatory Committee are: a provisional agenda (document A/AC.257/2) and the report of the Secretary-General on the consultations on the potential modalities of participation in the substantive preparatory process and the high-level intergovernmental event on financing for development (document A/AC.257/1).

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