Meetings Coverage

The General Assembly this morning elected Joseph Deiss, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Switzerland who led his country’s accession to the United Nations in 2002, as President of its sixty-fifth session.

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”.

Israel needed to change its aggressive stance towards the Palestinians or face the possibility of a catastrophic outcome in the future, Edward Peck, a former United States ambassador to Mauritania and Iraq, told the Palestinian Rights Committee today.

Following a day-long debate on implementing the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the follow-up 2006 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS, the General Assembly this afternoon adopted by consensus a draft decision to take note of the Secretary-General’s recommendations on the matter, use the report to inform a high-level plenary meeting on the Millennium Development Goals in September, and hold consultations by December to pave the way for a comprehensive HIV/AIDS review next year.

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.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today suspended its 2010 resumed session when it ran out of time to complete consideration of its report; it agreed to ask the Committee on Conferences for additional meeting time in order to wrap up its business for the 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”.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) today recommended sevenentities for consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, postponed its consideration of 32 applications, and closed three others. It also suspended 77 organizations which failed to complete reporting requirements, and one more on the basis of a written complaint by the delegation of Turkey.