Press Conference

Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference held in New York today, 14 December 2009:

The Security Council should immediately suspend United Nations support to military operations in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo until clear conditions were in place to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and the removal of commanders known to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch said at Headquarters today.

John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said today that he and other humanitarian actors would push negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen to guarantee sufficient funding and action plans to help the world’s poorest, most vulnerable people adapt to the changing weather patterns threatening their physical and economic survival.

The United Nations must be prepared to make efficiency gains in the next five years to free up funds to better respond to the world’s needs, said Gareth Thomas, Minister of State for International Development of the United Kingdom, addressing journalists on priorities for a more effective international humanitarian response.

The top United Nations peacekeeping officials today reported significant progress in the ongoing discussions among Member States on a study of wide-ranging proposals to bolster the world body’s peacekeeping capacity, in their quarterly press conference during which they also updated reporters on peace operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Southern Lebanon, and in the Western Darfur region of Sudan.

Unless it received new funding from donors immediately, United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia would begin 2010 with “zero” in the bank, a “life-threatening” situation that could trigger a spillover of people into neighbouring states like Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, said Mark Bowden, United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia.

The plight of the world’s poor must be addressed alongside global warming at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said at a Headquarters press conference today.

There was a need to tackle the international networks fuelling the crisis in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dinesh Mahtani, Coordinator of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said at Headquarters today.

With the United Nations Conference on Climate Change set to begin next Monday in Copenhagen, there were several signs of optimism that the meeting’s outcome would be successful, Janos Pasztor, Director of the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, said during a Headquarters press conference.

Denial of a crime and its cover-up could constitute crimes in themselves, said Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, alluding to the case he was building against Sudanese officials for atrocities committed in Darfur.