Meetings Coverage

Calling for increased cooperation among Member States, the incoming President of the General Assembly said today that the upcoming year would be pivotal for the 193-nation organ as it sought to identify the parameters of the post-2015 development agenda.

Following four decades of despotic rule in Libya, it was evident that preconceived ideas about political transition were more likely to be a “recipe for disappointment, if not failure”, as demand for a national dialogue to address the faltering process grew across the political spectrum, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in that country told the Security Council today.

The General Assembly concluded its sixty-seventh session today, capping a year characterized by a mix of breakthroughs and failures, with the adoption of the first-ever global arms trade treaty prominent among the former, and inaction on the Syrian tragedy among the latter.

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Somalia, Nicholas Kay, told the Security Council this afternoon that, if asked if he was optimistic about Somalia, his answer would be a resounding “yes” — for “behind the twists and turns, the crises and the standoffs, Somalia has the foundations for progress”.

The Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) concluded its substantive work for the General Assembly’s sixty-seventh session today, adopting a draft resolution by which it endorsed a procedural report on the work of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations.

Liberia should be proud of its achievements, but 10 years was too short a time in which to reverse the effects of a war that left a nation shattered and overturn more than a century of social and political exclusion, as well as poor governance, the Security Council heard today.

Reform of the international financial system should include reducing its overreliance on credit rating agencies and increasing competition among them, speakers said today, as the General Assembly held its first ever thematic debate on the role of those institutions as arbiters of creditworthiness.

The Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations concluded its 2013 substantive session today, adopting a procedural report on its work.

Education was a primary tool for building a culture of peace, and the United Nations had rightly placed it at the forefront to that end, speakers said today as the General Assembly held a high-level forum on that topic.

Iran had remained silent to inquiries about its ballistic missile launches and an intercepted arms shipment, the Chair of the Security Council Committee charged with monitoring sanctions on that country said today.