Security Council: No name

The long-awaited presidential election in Côte d'Ivoire could take place before mid-2010 if solutions could be found to key outstanding issues relating to the electoral list and the country’s reunification, Choi Young-Jin, the senior United Nations official in the country, said in a briefing to the Security Council this morning.

The Security Council this morning decided that the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) should make the necessary arrangements with the Government for its withdrawal by 15 May 2010, handing over any residual responsibilities in regard to its mandate of monitoring arms and armed personnel, as the 15-member body renewed the Mission’s mandate until that date.

On 19 January 2010, the Security Council Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee approved the addition of the three entries specified below to its Consolidated List of individuals and entities subject to the assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo set out in paragraph 1 of Security Council resolution 1904 (2009) adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.

Recognizing the dire circumstances arising from last week’s devastating earthquake in Haiti, the Security Council endorsed this morning the Secretary-General’s recommendation to increase the force levels of the United Nations Mission there.

The following Security Council press statement on the Haiti earthquake was read out today by Council President Zhang Yesui (China):

While the fragility of Nepal’s peace process remains real, in the past month the parties had demonstrated a “renewed urgency” on the core issues and those breakthroughs in the political impasse must be followed by swift progress in the peace process to avoid instability and allow the United Nations mission there to complete its tasks, the Security Council was told this morning.

The crisis in Somalia was no longer local or even regional, but a global one that could no longer be ignored, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the Secretary-General’s top representative in that country, said today in a briefing to the Security Council.

The following Security Council statement was read out today by Council President Zhang Yesui (China):

The following Security Council press statement was read out by Council President Zhang Yesui (China) today, 13 January:

Following a two-day retreat of officials from 11 regional organizations with the Secretary-General and a Security Council meeting that heard from them this morning, the Council expressed its intention to promote closer and more operational cooperation between the United Nations and such organizations in the fields of conflict early warning, prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding and to ensure the coherence, synergy and collective effectiveness of their efforts.