Security Council: Meetings Coverage

With Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at an “extremely worrying impasse”, due largely to simmering tensions and frequent protests in East Jerusalem, ongoing deprivation in the Gaza Strip, and an uptick in militant rocket fire into Israel, a senior United Nations political official today warned the Security Council that the effort to forge a viable Middle East peace was seriously at risk.

The senior United Nations official in Kosovo, briefing the Security Council today, called on the authorities in that territory and in Serbia, as well as on Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs, to work together on creating a multi-ethnic society, protecting cultural heritages and ensuring regional prosperity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While West Africa continued to make progress in critical areas, weak governance, lagging development, climate change, the changing nature of drug trafficking and other challenges continued to threaten peace and stability in the volatile subregion, a top United Nations official told the Security Council today.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council today that Afghanistan had reached a “critical juncture” after a challenging year of difficult elections, a deteriorating security situation and doubts about the strategies of the Government and the international community.