Security Council: Meetings Coverage

The current Gaza crisis must be turned into an opportunity for real change on the ground while proximity talks were sustained with a view to holding direct talks as soon as possible, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process told the Security Council this morning. “This body clearly stated two weeks ago that the situation in Gaza is not sustainable,” said Robert Serry in the regular briefing on the Middle East conflict.

Echoing the Secretary-General’s view that a solution to the situation in Cyprus was “well within reach”, the Security Council this morning extended the mandate of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force there, known as UNFICYP, for a further six months, until 15 December 2010.

An integrated approach to stability in Sudan, linking peace in Darfur to preparations for the January referendum on the future of Southern Sudan, was presented to the Security Council by officials of the United Nations and the African Union this morning.

The arrest of two prominent Sudanese citizens indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity was crucial for bringing peace to Darfur and ending impunity, Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the Security Council today.

Expressing deep concern about Iran’s lack of compliance with its previous resolutions on ensuring the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme, the Security Council imposed additional sanctions on the country today, expanding an arms embargo and tightening restrictions on financial and shipping enterprises related to “proliferation-sensitive activities”.

The Security Council this morning extended the mandate of the Panel of Experts monitoring sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea until 12 June 2011. Acting under the binding Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the Council unanimously adopted resolution 1928 (2010) maintaining the current mandate of the group that it established on 12 June 2009, when the body also condemned a nuclear weapons test conducted by the east Asian country and toughened the sanctions regime on it.

Concerned by the “new challenges and threats” the Government and people of Haiti faced in the aftermath of the devastating 12 January earthquake, the Security Council today authorized deployment of further 680 police to the United Nations peacekeeping mission there, in addition to the boosted force levels provided in January chiefly to assist Haitian authorities throughout the coming electoral period and subsequent transfer of power early next year.

After yet another attempt to organize national elections in Côte d’Ivoire had come up short, the main Ivorian political factions were sticking to their “core interests”, the top United Nations official there told the Security Council today, as he warned that competing priorities over the oft-postponed ballot, reunification and citizen identification had left the divided country at a “complex […] delicate impasse”.

Meeting this morning to consider a vacancy on the International Criminal Court of Justice, the Security Council set 9 September 2010 as the date for the election to fill it.

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, the Security Council expressed deep regret at the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force during the Israeli military operation early on Monday in international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza, and condemned those acts which had killed at least 10 civilians and wounded many more.