General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

Taking note of the Secretary-General’s recent inconclusive report on investigations into possible violations of international law during the deadly 2008/2009 conflict in Gaza, the General Assembly today requested a further report in five months.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today that 2010 would be an important year for the Special Committee on Decolonization because it marked both the end of the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism and the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.

United Nations peacekeepers were performing commendably despite the complexity of mandates and the lack of key capabilities, the representative of Bangladesh told the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations today as it concluded its general debate. He said that prevailing mismatches between complex mandates and resources might be overcome through careful study and building up the required capabilities.

The General Assembly this afternoon recognized the International Day of Nowruz, a spring festival of Persian origin, and moved back the dates of the next high-level dialogue on Financing for Development, as it continued its sixty-fourth session.

With the United Nations peacekeeping architecture stretched and under increasing stress, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had developed an “ambitious, forward-looking” agenda to better enable it to contain violence, protect civilians and help national actors build peace after conflict, the head of the world body’s peacekeeping operations said today as the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations opened its 2010 substantive session.

The United Nations Meeting, having assumed the task of considering the urgency of addressing the permanent status issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, did not hesitate to wade into that difficult terrain, managing to produce in the end some fresh ideas, unbound by the constraints of intergovernmental diplomacy.

While some might take issue with the United States’ past actions in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, few had any doubt that the country, under President Barack Obama, was committed to being an honest broker, its representative said today as the International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace entered its second day.

Issues of borders, settlements, refugees, Jerusalem, and water dominated discussion this afternoon in the International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, as experts made compelling cases for why each was the pivotal permanent status issue around which renewed peace negotiations should coalesce.

“Confidence begets confidence; stability begets stability; security begets security; peace begets peace,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today in a message to the International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, urging solid support for a resolution of the decades-old conflict.

Despite an encouraging commitment to peacebuilding priorities on the part of the Guinea-Bissau authorities, there had been only slow progress in security-sector reform, economic development and combating drug trafficking, the Chairperson of the Peacebuilding Commission’s relevant country-specific configuration said today.