Fifty-ninth General Assembly

General Committee

4^th Meeting (AM)

GENERAL COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS INCLUSION OF ADDITIONAL ITEMON general ASSEMBLY’S

AGENDA, SPLITTING OF JOINT DEBATE ON DIAMONDS, ARMED CONFLICT

The General Committee today recommended the inclusion of an additional item -- observer status for the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States in the General Assembly -- on the agenda of the Assembly’s current session, and that it be allocated to the Sixth Committee (Legal).

Presenting the request for inclusion, the representative of Saint Lucia said he hoped observer status would promote cooperation between the United Nations and the EasternCaribbeanStates.

In other action, the General Committee recommended that the Assembly split its planned joint debate on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict, and the prevention of armed conflict, following a request by Canada, the current Chair of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme for Rough Diamonds.

According to a letter, dated 8 October, from the Permanent Representative of Canada to the President of the General Assembly (A/59/424), the decision to combine those two items for debate –- originally set for 1 November –- had been made when the timing of the respective reports was not known.  The report for the debate on conflict diamonds would be available in early November, but the report on the prevention of conflict would not be ready until January 2005.

Furthermore, Canada was concerned that addressing the two issues concurrently could lead to the overshadowing of the debate on conflict diamonds by the larger debate on conflict prevention.  Therefore, the Committee recommended that the debate be separated and rescheduled to a later date.

The General Committee will meet again at a time to be announced.

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