Security Council: Meetings Coverage

Despite raised hopes, the overall political, security and socio-economic situation in the Central African Republic remained “fragile and challenging”, the senior United Nations representative in that country told the Security Council today.

Urging the parties in Cyprus to build on previous progress in negotiations for the reunification of the divided island by intensifying the momentum of talks, the Security Council this morning extended the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping force there, known as UNFICYP, until 15 June 2010.

The outgoing members of the Security Council -– Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, Libya and Viet Nam –- delivered briefings today on the work of subsidiary bodies they had chaired during their two-year tenure.

Burundi was making commendable progress in emerging from the civil conflict that had ravaged the country for more than a decade, but it required continued international assistance in several critical areas, Youssef Mahmoud, Executive Representative of the Secretary-General, told the Security Council today.

The Security Council committee monitoring the implementation of sanctions imposed on Iran had received reports of further violations of a ban on the export of arms and related materiel to Iran, its Chairman told the Council today.

Noting with concern the postponement of the first round of the presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire, scheduled for 29 November, the Security Council today urged the Ivorian actors to address the remaining tasks and to hold open, free, fair and transparent presidential elections at the earliest possible date.

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.

“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.

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.