Security Council: No name

Concerned about the serious threat posed by drug trafficking to global security, particularly in Africa, the Security Council today called on the international community to strengthen its cooperation with the United Nations and regional organizations in fighting the scourge.

On 3 December 2009, the Security Council Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee approved the deletion (de-listing) of the entry specified below from its Consolidated List. The Committee approved this de-listing following its review of the name, as called for in paragraph 25 of Security Council resolution 1822 (2008).

The following Security Council press statement on the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) was read out today by Council President Michel Kafando (Burkina Faso):

“President Al Bashir [of the Sudan] will face justice. Any leader committing crimes will face justice. Power does not provide immunity”, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said today in the Security Council.

A regional United Nations workshop on implementing United Nations Security Council resolution 1540 (2004) will be held from 7 to 10 December in Cairo, Egypt.

Calling it a “criminal attack”, the Security Council this afternoon condemned “in the strongest terms” today’s terrorist attack in Mogadishu, Somalia, which killed and injured innocent civilians at a graduation ceremony for Somali medical students, resulting also in the deaths of the Ministers of Health, Higher Education and Education of the Somali Transitional Federal Government.

Top officials of the United Nations Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, briefing the Security Council today, called for Serbia’s sustained assistance in apprehending two high-level fugitives accused of atrocities in the Balkan wars of the 1990s and pressed Kenya to cooperate in the case of an at-large suspect in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Burkina Faso, December’s President of the Security Council, had organized an open debate on “drug trafficking as a threat to international security” on 8 December, that country’s Permanent Representative Michel Kafando said today at Headquarters.

“Among the Mission’s mandated activities, and among the efforts of the UN in Darfur, none is as important as those aimed at achieving a comprehensive political solution to end Darfur’s marginalization and enable its rightful representation in the national political process”, Edmond Mulet, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told the Security Council today.

The Security Council today decided to renew, for a period of 12 months, its previous authorizations for States and regional organizations cooperating with the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to enter Somalia’s territorial waters and use all necessary means to fight piracy and armed robbery at sea off the Somali coast, provided advance notification was given by the TFG to the Secretary-General.