Security Council

Burkina Faso, December’s President of the Security Council, had organized an open debate on “drug trafficking as a threat to international security” on 8 December, that country’s Permanent Representative Michel Kafando said today at Headquarters.

“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.

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 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.

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.

Despite a political impasse in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country was at a crossroads in its bid for Euro-Atlantic integration and required continued international support for that effort, Valentin Inzko, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, told the Security Council today.

On 17 November 2009, the Security Council Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee approved the amendments specified with strikethrough and underline in the entry below to its Consolidated List of individuals and entities subject to the assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo set out in paragraph 1 of Security Council resolution 1822 (2008) adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia was not only a criminal activity, but it was, first of all, a very successful business, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Somalia and Head of the United Nations Political Office there told the Security Council today.

The Security Council this morning authorized for another year, until 18 November 2010, the European Union Stabilization Force (EUFOR) mandated to ensure continued compliance with the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995.