Security Council: Meetings Coverage

The Security Council this morning decided to renew until 31 December 2012 the mandate of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which monitors the ceasefire in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, while expressing grave concern at recent violations by Syrian Armed Forces in the Force’s area of operations.

Around the world — especially in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa — the Security Council must use the tools at its disposal to protect unarmed civilians, who were often caught in the crossfire or targeted in places that rightly should be sanctuaries, including hospitals, schools and places of worship, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, as he launched an open debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

The Security Council held a discussion today with the military commanders of key United Nations peacekeeping operations in Africa, the Middle East and Haiti, who highlighted important strategies for ensuring unity of command and synergy of efforts among the Organization’s 120,000 peacekeepers that would allow for their diverse qualities, skills and experience to have a “multiplying effect” on achieving common operational goals.

Sporadic clashes, military operations and announcements of settlement construction in the West Bank were challenging the positive environment created by recent fragile forward steps in the Israeli-Palestinian talks, the Security Council was told today, during a briefing on recent developments in the Middle East.

While sanctions imposed on Iran concerning its nuclear programme had been effective, the “cost of acquisition” had not yet forced Iran to reach a compromise solution requiring that strict adherence to the sanctions must continue, the Security Council was told today as it was briefed by the head of the Committee charged with monitoring those sanctions.

While “considerable” progress had been made in combating the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a mutiny led by officers in the Congolese army had caused a serious deterioration of security in North and South Kivu provinces, and an easing of pressure on other armed groups operating in the region, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative told the Security Council today.

The Security Council today demanded the cessation of all actions aimed at undermining Yemen’s Government of National Unity and political transition — such as attacks on oil, gas and electricity infrastructure, interference with the restructuring of the armed and security forces, and obstruction of implementation of presidential decrees — and expressed its readiness to consider further measures, including under the Charter’s Article 41, if such actions continued.

Determining that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons remained a threat to international peace and security, the Security Council this morning extended the mandate of a Panel of Experts — established to analyse incidents of non-compliance with its resolution 1718 (2006) concerning the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — until 12 July 2013.

The Presidents and Prosecutors of the International Tribunals on serious crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the 1994 Rwanda genocide told the Security Council today that they had recently made great strides in completing their work and ensuring a transfer of remaining tasks to a so-called “Residual Mechanism”.

The Security Council this morning decided to extend until 9 July 2013 the mandate of the Panel of Experts of its Committee to monitor the implementation of the sanctions regime against Iran, imposed in relation to the country’s nuclear programmes.