PRESS CONFERENCE BY security council president

 

The Security Council’s schedule for the month would be “fairly heavy” and feature wide-ranging consultations on situations in Africa, before members of the 15-nation body left New York on 14 June for a week-long visit to the continent, according to Council President, Ambassador Johan Verbeke of Belgium.

At a Headquarters press conference on the Security Council’s programme of work for June, Ambassador Verbeke told reporters that the Council mission to Africa would run through 21 June.  Responding to several questions, he sketched out the trip, noting that, at present, it looked as though all 15 nations on the Council would be represented at high diplomatic levels, and that the members would make stops in five capitals, including Accra, Ghana (15 June), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (16 June), Khartoum, Sudan (17 June), Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (18 June) and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (19 June).

Ahead of the trip, the Council would be briefed on the situation in the Sudan next Monday, 11 June, and on the Democratic Republic of Congo and Côte d’Ivoire, Wednesday, on 13 June, he said.  On Thursday, just before leaving New York, it was expecting a briefing by Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, B. Lynn Pascoe, on his recent trip to Somalia.  To questions about Somalia, he said that the Council might also consider the world body’s so-called “contingency plan” on the possible transition from the African Union mission already on the ground in the war-torn country to a United Nations mission.

He said that the Council was also expected to hold debates on key United Nations judicial bodies, starting with a briefing this Thursday by the International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo.  The Council had also scheduled a debate on the Special Court for Sierra Leone on 8 June, followed on 18 June by a meeting on the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, at which Yugoslavia Tribunal Prosecutor Carla del Ponte would speak.  As those tribunals neared the end of their Council-mandated completion phases, it was important for Council members to closely consider how the courts will wrap up their work.

Also on the Council’s calendar were two important mandate extensions, he said, pointing to the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) on 14 June and the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) on 29 June.

Looking ahead, he said the Middle East would feature “fairly prominently” and, apart from its regular Middle East briefing on 20 June, the Council would hold 11 June consultations on resolution 1559 (2004) on 11 June, which called on Lebanon to establish its sovereignty over all of its land and that resolution had called upon “foreign forces” to withdraw from Lebanon.  The Council might also take up the latest report on the implementation of its resolution 1701 (2006) as part of an expected private meeting with the independent assessment mission.  That team was expected back in New York in about 10 days from a trip to assess the monitoring of Lebanon’s border with Syria.

Responding to several questions on Kosovo, Ambassador Verbeke said that the Council was going to “wait and see where we are in the coming days”, particularly in light of ongoing talks in the region and the upcoming meeting in Germany of the Group of Eight world’s most industrialized countries.  “From there we will see whether action here in New York will be requested,” he said, adding that the “wait and see period” would be short, a matter of a few days, perhaps.

He also highlighted the Council’s 22 June open debate on protection of children in armed conflict, which would feature the report of the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes.

In addition, Belgium had decided that the ministerial level debate during its presidency would focus, for the first time, on the relationship between natural resources and conflict.  That meeting, to be held on 25 June, would be presided over by Belgian Foreign Minister, Karel De Gucht, and feature an opening address by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

About two weeks ago, Belgium had hosted a “building block seminar” on the issue in the Dag Hammarskjold Library, and that on Wednesday, it would host jointly with the Institute for Security Studies, a similar seminar in Pretoria.  He hoped that both those events would pave the way for “in depth and innovative” talks during the Council’s debate.

He hoped that the meeting would go beyond the limits of the Council’s previous discussions on the matter, where the focus had generally been on cases where natural resources were the origin or cause of conflict, or where they had been used as fuel to prolong fighting –- often leading to the imposition of sanctions or establishment of expert groups.  Hopefully, the upcoming high-level discussion would also touch on how post-conflict Governments could create plans or strategies to use their countries’ natural resources as tools “for empowerment” that could help them move towards peacebuilding.  He added that the Council was holding the debate with the respectful awareness that a few of the issues that might come up were under the ambit of the General Assembly or the new Peacebuilding Commission. 

Moreover, he noted that the meeting might give greater priority to peacekeeping operations.  For instance, in terms of troop deployment, perhaps geographical distribution could be worked out with an eye towards resource-rich regions of the concerned country.

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For information media • not an official record