Security Council: Meetings Coverage

John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, briefed the Security Council today on his recent trip to the Sudan, acknowledging the recent efforts of the Government to work more closely with humanitarian workers in north and south Sudan, but saying the situation in the south was of major concern, and a full return of humanitarian capability was still needed in Darfur.

With Burundi entering a new phase in its efforts to emerge from a long civil war, support to socio-economic rebuilding and the 2010 elections could now be the focus of international efforts in the tiny Great Lakes country, the head of the Burundi arm of the Peacebuilding Commission told the Security Council today.

In the Security Council this morning, the head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL) called for international support for the United Nations unified post-conflict strategy in the country, while he praised its political leadership for an agreement that he said kept recent political violence from spiralling out of control.

The Sudan had a responsibility under the United Nations Charter to arrest President Omer al-Bashir and other Sudanese citizens charged with crimes in the violence-wracked Darfur region, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told the Security Council today.

Speakers in the Security Council today called on the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to continue to expedite the completion of all cases still on their dockets, while stressing the need for optimal mechanisms to take care of all residual tasks as their completion deadlines loomed.

The Security Council this afternoon welcomed the announcement of a time frame for long-postponed presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire, endorsed by all political actors and leading to a first round of voting on 29 November 2009.

Strongly urging the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders to increase the momentum in the United Nations-backed talks aimed at reunifying the divided island nation, the Security Council today extended through mid-December the world body’s long-running peacekeeping operation in Cyprus.

Security Council diplomats today reported to the 15-nation body on their just-concluded eight-day mission to Africa, which included stops in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where they met with senior African Union officials, as well as Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia.

Bosnia and Herzegovina continued to make progress toward “a peaceful, viable State, irreversibly on course for our European integration”, but was hampered in that effort by divisive partisan rhetoric, Valentin Inzko, High Representative for the Balkan country told the Security Council today.

The Chairs of the three committees created by the Security Council to enforce its counter-terrorism measures and related sanctions stressed today that coordination between the panels, regular “stocktaking” of their working methods, and strong backing from United Nations Member States were of key importance in ensuring effective and efficient implementation of their respective mandates.