Meetings Coverage

Nearly a year after Israel’s military offensive into the Gaza Strip which left some 1,400 Palestinians dead and pushed an already desperate humanitarian situation into crisis, the question of Palestine was at a critical juncture, and sustained focus was needed to both revive stagnant peace talks and create conditions for broader peace in the Middle East, General Assembly delegates said today, as they launched their annual debate of those and related issues.

“Among the Mission’s mandated activities, and among the efforts of the UN in Darfur, none is as important as those aimed at achieving a comprehensive political solution to end Darfur’s marginalization and enable its rightful representation in the national political process”, Edmond Mulet, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told the Security Council today.

The Security Council today decided to renew, for a period of 12 months, its previous authorizations for States and regional organizations cooperating with the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to enter Somalia’s territorial waters and use all necessary means to fight piracy and armed robbery at sea off the Somali coast, provided advance notification was given by the TFG to the Secretary-General.

As the United Nations observed the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People today, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed deep concern that talks between Israel’s Prime Minister and the Palestinian President on a two-State solution had been suspended for almost a year.

The Security Council, condemning the continuing illicit traffic of weapons in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, decided this morning to extend and expand the arms embargo there and its related sanctions regime until 30 November 2010.

The Second Committee (Economic and Financial) approved by consensus today three draft resolutions relating, respectively, to sustainable mountain development, cyber security and landlocked developing countries.

The Peacebuilding Commission was the central intergovernmental body mandated with ensuring that the United Nations led in coordinating international efforts to help alleviate the suffering of populations in post-conflict situations, the Commission’s Chairman, Heraldo Muñoz of Chile told the Security Council today.

Alarmed at the increase in racist violence and xenophobic ideas in many parts of the world, the General Assembly would express unequivocal condemnation of all forms of racism and racial discrimination by one of five draft resolutions approved today as the Third Committee concluded its work for the current session.

International partners were seeking a way out of “a deep and worrying impasse” in the political quest for a Middle East peace as security and economic efforts continued on the ground, Haile Menkerios, Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, told the Security Council in a briefing this morning.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this morning made recommendations to the General Assembly on the final administrative liquidation budget of the recently-terminated United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG).