The Secretary-General welcomes today’s action by the General Assembly to quickly approve his nominee for Under-Secretary-General for the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), Carman Lapointe-Young of Canada, who possesses the breadth and depth of experience and expertise required for this demanding position.

The Secretary-General will meet tomorrow with Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Ehud Barak. He expects to discuss a range of issues with him, including the situation in Gaza and the need to continue Israel’s freeze on settlement activity.

The Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) condemned the attack on Ashkelon earlier today, in which a rocket struck a residential area. Indiscriminate rocket fire against civilians is completely unacceptable and constitutes a terrorist attack. UNSCO has called on the de facto authorities in Gaza to ensure that these kinds of actions do not occur.

With the General Assembly having just wrapped up talks on the Secretary-General’s sweeping proposals for transforming service delivery to United Nations peacekeeping missions, senior field support officials announced today that the world body was poised to approve a new, enhanced global system to match the global enterprise into which peacekeeping has evolved.

Presenting the results of a review of all cases on the Consolidated List established and maintained by the Security Council Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee, Thomas Mayr-Harting, Committee Chair, said that of a total 488 entries, 45 had been removed and another 66 were pending a final decision at the request of Member States.

The Secretary-General announced this morning that he has set up a Panel of Inquiry on the flotilla incident of 31 May. He called the launch of the Panel “an unprecedented development”. He thanked the leaders of Israel and Turkey, with whom he engaged in last minute consultations over the weekend, for their spirit of compromise and forward looking cooperation.

The Secretary-General, here at UN Headquarters, this morning addressed a meeting on increasing the participation of women in UN police operations.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, confirms that there has been an exchange of fire between the Lebanese army and the Israeli army along the Blue Line, in the general area of El Adeisse. UNIFIL has been focused on restoring calm in the area through intensive contacts with both the parties. To that end, the Acting Force Commander, Brigadier General Santi Bonfanti, decided to personally fly by helicopter to El Adeisse.

The status of Kosovo, turbulence in the Middle East, piracy off the coast of Somalia and peacekeeping were among the major areas to be considered by the Security Council during the Russian Federation’s presidency in August, Vitaly Churkin, that country’s Permanent Representative, said at a Headquarters press conference today.

In Tokyo, the Secretary-General spoke to students this morning, one day before he is to visit Nagasaki, and said that he hoped the younger generation of Japanese will become leaders for disarmament. He told students at Waseda University in Tokyo that they should tell the stories of the survivors of nuclear bombs, the hibakusha, since their testimony is the most graphic argument against the nuclear threat.