Meetings Coverage

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.

The Security Council decided today to extend until 31 May 2010 the deployment of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), expressing the intention to extend it further following consideration of ways to enhance MONUC’S ability to protect civilians.

Gravely concerned about findings that Eritrea had provided support to armed groups undermining peace and reconciliation in Somalia and that it had not withdrawn its forces following clashes with Djibouti in June 2008, the Security Council today imposed an arms embargo on that country, in addition to travel restrictions on and a freeze on the assets of its political and military leaders.

The General Assembly concluded the main part of its substantive session early this morning with the adoption a $5.16 billion budget for the United Nations 2010‑2011 biennium, and importantly, a resolution that maintains the current scale by which States are assessed dues to the Organization, reflecting a compromise between the need to review that formula and maintain a balanced approach to assessments.