Sixty-third General Assembly

Plenary

75^th Meeting (AM)

GENERAL ASSEMBLY APPROVES DATES FOR 2009 GENERAL DEBATE, INCLUDES SATURDAY

MEETING, ALSO MAKES APPOINTMENTS TO SUBSIDIARY BODIES

 

The General Assembly today agreed to hold the general debate of its sixty-fourth session over seven days in late September 2009:  from Wednesday, 23 September, running through Wednesday, 30 September.

Adopting a consensus resolution, the 193-member body further decided that those arrangements, which would incur overtime compensation for meetings servicing and other related staff at a cost of $100,500 for the plenary meeting that would take place Saturday, 26 September, would in no way create a precedent for future sessions.

On the recommendation of its General Committee, the Assembly also decided to include in the agenda of its current session an item on “the financing of activities arising from Security Council resolution 1863 (2009)”, which it then allocated to its Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary).

That resolution, adopted on 16 January, expressed the Council’s intention to establish a United Nations peacekeeping operation in war-torn Somalia to take over from the African Union force currently deployed there, “subject to a further decision of the Security Council by 1 June”.  The Council’s decision would be based on a report prepared by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki‑moon and to be submitted by 15 April 2009.  In the meantime, the resolution requested Mr. Ban to set up a trust fund to provide financial support to the African Union force, known as AMISOM, until a United Nations operation was deployed, and to hold a donors conference to solicit contributions to that fund as soon as possible.

In other business, the Assembly took note of the appointment by its President of Mexico as a member of the Committee on Conferences for a three-year term beginning on 1 January 2009.  That appointment filled the last open seat from among the Latin American and Caribbean States in the Committee’s membership, which the Assembly had last considered in late October 2008.  At that time, it took note of the Assembly President’s appointment of the Congo, France, Malaysia, Mozambique, Philippines and the Russian Federation to similar three-year terms on the Committee.

The Assembly also reappointed today Tadanori Inomata of Japan as a member of the Joint Inspection Unit for a five-year term beginning 1 January 2010 and expiring 31 December 2014, by the terms of a note by the President of the General Assembly (document A/63/667).

At the top of the meeting, Assembly Vice-President Raymond Wolfe of Jamaica informed delegations that 13 countries ‑- Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Dominican Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Malawi, Marshall Islands, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia and Tajikistan ‑- were in arrears in the payment of their financial contributions to the United Nations within the terms of Article 19 of the Charter (document A/63/725).

[Under Article 19, a Member State in arrears in the payment of its dues in an amount that equals or exceeds the contributions due for two preceding years can lose its vote in the General Assembly.]

The Assembly will meet again at a date and time to be announced.

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For information media • not an official record