General Assembly Session 56 meeting 26

Mr. Ling (Belarus)

The delegation of the Republic of Belarus would like to join previous speakers in thanking the Ambassador of Ireland for having presented the periodic report of the Security Council to the fifty-sixth session of the General Assembly.

The arguments made in the report deserve serious study and analysis, because they touch on the most topical issues of the functioning of one of the most important bodies of the United Nations, the one responsible for maintaining international peace and security.

The dispassionate statistical data contained in the report confirm that last year the Security Council worked actively to maintain international peace and security. This is convincingly borne out by the significant growth in the number of official meetings -- which went up from 144 during the previous period under review to 173 -- and by the increase in the number of working documents of various kinds that were examined and prepared by the members of the Council. It is very important that the Council focused its attention on the truly vital issues of settling conflicts in Africa and in the Balkans, the problems of peacekeeping in East Timor, a multifaceted examination of the peacekeeping operations system, sanctions activities and other issues. A number of steps undertaken by the Council helped bring about considerable progress and important decisions in various areas.

In this regard, we believe that it is necessary to note the great improvements in the system of peacekeeping operations. Without a doubt, a key role was played by the recommendations in the report by Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, which were presented to us before the Millennium Summit, and also by the activities of the Working Group of the Whole on United Nations peacekeeping operations, which was established by the Security Council on 31 January 2001. Belarus welcomes the initiative of Singapore to hold, on 16 January 2001, a large-scale, open discussion in the Council on strengthening cooperation with troop-contributing countries. We are convinced that resolution 1353 (2001) opens up new possibilities for positive change in this area, which is a key link in the process of improving peacekeeping operations under the aegis of the United Nations.

The Republic of Belarus, which signed, on 1 October 2001, a memorandum of understanding with the Secretariat on participation in the system of standby peacekeeping arrangements, attaches particular importance to these discussions on this question in the framework of the Council.

I would like to point out the positive role played by the Council in efforts to normalize the situation in the Great Lakes region in Africa. It is absolutely obvious that the progress that we are witnessing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi and in border areas between Ethiopia and Eritrea would have all been impossible without the leading role of the Security Council. In this regard, I would like to note with satisfaction the increased interaction between the Council and regional organizations. The joint meeting between the Council and the representatives of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the plans to hold a similar joint meeting on Burundi, in our view, show the need for and usefulness of such contacts. We believe that active efforts should be made to continue holding such meetings.

It is also important to note the efforts that the Council has made in the period under review to interact with other bodies of the United Nations. We are convinced that careful analysis of the still untapped potential in this area is very much needed. It is absolutely clear that the concept of conflict prevention and the full implementation of the strategy of resolving various crisis situations are connected with many economic and social issues. Therefore, we need to tap the potential of other bodies of the United Nations system. In this regard, the United Kingdom initiative on holding a joint meeting between the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council that takes into consideration the ideas and proposals of these bodies, in the opinion of Belarus, can and must be acted upon.

Against background of the great progress that the Council has made in the process of considering the question of peacekeeping operations, the activities of the Working Group on General Issues of Sanctions also continues to be a focus of attention of the Member States of the United Nations. We realize that parts IV and V of the report cannot fully reflect the important dynamic of considering the sanctions question in the Council.

After the tragic events of 11 September 2001, the question of sanctions is becoming one of the highest priorities in the activities of the Security Council. It is clear that under present conditions, this question should be given paramount importance. Belarus considers that expert assessments by specialized international agencies and a more careful use of the Wassenaar Arrangement can play an important role in this regard. Belarus welcomes the recent resolutions of the Council on the lifting of sanctions against the Sudan and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. We think that the decisive steps undertaken by the Council can be seen as important and constructive contributions towards creating a comprehensive basis for combating international terrorism.

The report reflects the efforts deployed by the Council in the settlement of the Middle East conflict following the Al-Aqsa intifada in 2000. Belarus welcome the efforts made by the Council to put an end to the violence and civilian casualties in the region. At the same time, we regret that the most decisive of steps have not been taken in order to find a comprehensive solution in order to settle the crisis and begin negotiations towards the full implementation of earlier Security Council resolutions and the recommendations of the special Committee of George Mitchell.

We continue to be concerned over the situation in the Balkans. The Security Council report shows that the activities of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo have always been at the centre of the Council's attention. We are convinced that on the eve of elections in the province, the Council can and must do its utmost to ensure that the vote is truly universal and can be a starting point for the full settlement of the situation in Kosovo in accordance with resolution 1244 (1999).

Belarus also welcomes the steps undertaken by the Council to stabilize the situation in Macedonia. Further careful monitoring of the issues in the Balkans and balanced decisions on the part of the United Nations body having primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security will be, in our view, a guarantee of peace in that region, and indeed of Europe as a whole.

Careful analysis of the report of the Security Council submitted this session once again confirms the need for improvements in its form and content. This was already stated by representatives of many delegations. It is obvious that this document is too voluminous. Moreover, it is basically a technical compilation of resolutions, decisions and others documents that have been discussed and adopted by the Council during the year.

At a time when the Council is constantly improving the methods of its work, retaining the status quo of the format of the report cannot help the General Assembly fully and adequately evaluate the work that is carried out by the Council. In our view, a positive example in this regard could be the report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization, which does not simply state, but also analyses the activities of the United Nations. We are convinced that additional study and consideration of the opinions of the Member States in this area will improve the report.

The events of this September in the United States of America once again show the importance of the authority conferred on the Council under the Charter to maintain peace and security. The threat of global terrorism means new challenges to humankind, requiring a new consolidation and concentration of efforts and the search for new, and sometimes unorthodox solutions. From this rostrum, I would like to underscore that the President and the Government of Belarus unequivocally support resolution 1373 (2001) of the Security Council, which is aimed at creating an effective, comprehensive mechanism to combat terrorism. We in Belarus are currently working on a number of measures to implement the provisions of this resolution at the national level.

Fighting terrorism brings together the members of the Security Council and all the members of the United Nations. We stand ready to contribute towards that unity, now and in the future.

My delegation would also like to congratulate the new members of the Council -- Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and the Syrian Arab Republic. We wish them every success.

Mr. Heinbecker (Canada)

We speak today on the report of the Security Council this year as a delegation that was a member of the Security Council for half of the time in question. This explains why we understand that some practices of the Security Council have to be the way they are. It also explains why we understand that some things can, and should, change. In particular, we think there are three ways in which relatively small changes in Council practice could reap significant benefits in Council performance: cooperation with troop-contributing countries, transparency and accountability.

One way to improve the effectiveness of Council decision-making is to ensure that there is genuine cooperation with those members most affected by Council decisions on peacekeeping, that is, the troop-contributing countries. An encouraging start has been made, and we welcome the establishment of the Working Group on peacekeeping operations, under the chairmanship of Ambassador Ward. We wish to work with the Council and with that Group, and to go beyond consultations to genuine cooperation. Such cooperation, if properly executed, would not only narrow the accountability gap between those who make the decisions to deploy peacekeeping missions and those who supply the troops, but it would also ensure that the Council had the best possible information at its disposal from countries that had their forces in the field.

Furthermore, it would give the Council access to the perspectives and the ideas of the troop-contributing countries. Present practice does not allow the Council and major troop-contributing countries to engage constructively enough on specific peacekeeping missions, and it does not afford troop-contributing Governments the control and influence their national Parliaments believe them to have when they agree to deploy forces in contemporary complex and dangerous missions. Current meetings, with their consultative orientation, are inevitably perfunctory, because they are structurally incapable of producing satisfactory results.

The Security Council Working Group on peacekeeping operations has the opportunity to correct this practice, which was developed in less demanding times for less dangerous missions. We are therefore hopeful that the views of many troop contributors -- as contributed to the Council over the past several months, including in the letter that is being signed today by the Permanent Representatives of troop-contributing countries -- will be taken to heart by the Working Group. Mission-specific core groups made up of Security Council members and major troop-contributing countries for particular missions would manage operations cooperatively, not just engage in elective consultations by the grace of the Council or at the initiative of an individual member of the Council. That would go a long way to ensuring that the Council's decisions were sound for each specific mission.

Our second point is on transparency and engagement between Security Council members and non-Security Council members. Transparency has been a term of art applied to the more frequent recourse to open meetings that we have seen in the past couple of years. It is an outcome that we worked for when we were on the Council, and one that we welcome. Holding public meetings of the Security Council permits all Member States to have access to the briefing information provided by the Secretariat. It also allows Member States to hear how the Council is treating issues that are on its agenda, and it can at times permit input from non-Council-member States into the decision-making processes of the Council.

At the same time, the Council needs to guard against the temptation to hold public meetings that have more to do with theatre than with policy. Holding public meetings after decisions have been made on a topic and resolutions or presidential statements have been drafted induces cynicism rather than engagement, and indifference rather than cooperation. The Council has numerous meeting formats at its disposal, from in camera meetings through those to which select members of the membership are invited to public meetings. All of these formats should be utilized, even at the cost of convenience.

Effective decision-making in a global organization requires that accountability trump convenience. Techniques also matter. One of the most important of these, in our view, and the one on which, regrettably, we have had the least success as an Organization, was the attempt by the Council last year, led by the United Kingdom, to engage in a more interactive discussion. Good decision-making is hampered, not facilitated, by non-Council delegations reading out lengthy, repetitive statements, and by Council members sometimes struggling, and sometimes not, to listen to those statements. The practice is inefficient, it is ineffective and, worst, it is self-defeating. Delegations should, ideally, intervene to ask questions or to communicate ideas on how, corporately, the Council or the Organization might handle an issue differently or better. Except for the delegations whose countries are the objects of the exercise, there is rarely a need to put national positions on the record. Where such a need is felt, it would suffice to circulate written texts.

I turn to accountability. Our third point is that, however compelling a rationale for a veto is, it remains true that much of the dissatisfaction of the general membership with the Council arises from the use or the threat of the use of the veto. As previous debates in the General Assembly on Security Council reform have demonstrated unequivocally, an overwhelming number of delegations continue to call for some curtailment of the veto. Permanent members that expect the general membership to respect Council decisions need to respond to this dissatisfaction.

We are not suggesting that those who hold the veto renounce it. But we are suggesting that a voluntary code of conduct on the use of the veto, as proposed by one member of the permanent five two years ago, would be a good reform. From Bosnia to Somalia to Rwanda to Kosovo -- to name only a few instances -- the veto or the threat of a veto has played a role in the Council's making poor decisions. Such a code of conduct could make clear to the membership under what circumstances veto-holding members consider the use of the veto legitimate. It would introduce accountability to an instrument whose use, unfortunately, has too often been guided by concerns other than the maintenance of international peace and security.

As part of a voluntary code of conduct, permanent members could agree, for example, to meet with the broader membership to explain why they felt they had to use the veto or to threaten its use. Such a step would go a long way to improving the political accountability of Security Council decision-making.

Financial accountability is also important. Who is monitoring the Council from the perspective of financial responsibility? The General Assembly does hold a power of the purse. Greater recourse to that power to ensure that money is well spent is an idea whose time may well be coming.

Another area ripe for better accountability is the format of Security Council meetings. We should begin by stopping the practice of pretending that informal in camera meetings do not effectively exist. Nobody believes that so-called informal meetings are either informal, or mere consultations. But this accepted double-speak has detrimental affects for accountability. Depicting these gatherings as "non-meetings" of the Council greatly understates their importance. It also puts records of the meeting beyond Members' reach and, over time, beyond the reach of historians and others who may wish to analyse why the United Nations acted in a certain way at a certain time in history.

Accountability on this issue is a matter of concern to the General Assembly, not simply because the general membership pays for informal consultations of the Security Council -- for the extensive support unit within the Department of Political Affairs, for conference services and for the salaries of the many Secretariat staff who brief "non-meetings" on a regular basis. It is also a matter of concern because Council business is everyone's business, and because we are all affected by the outcome.

The obligations of the Security Council to the general membership as enshrined in the Charter -- especially concerning the procedures for their participation in Council discussions -- continue to be breached by placing what look, feel like and smell like meetings of the Security Council beyond the reach of the membership and, indeed, of the Charter.

We do not dispute the need for the Council to meet behind closed doors when the situation warrants, as it very often does. But the practice of clothing such regular and important in camera meetings of the Security Council in obscurity -- with no records being made available to the membership -- does us all a disservice.

The events of the last month, during which the Council was both effective and efficient in responding to terrorism, illustrate that those many hours spent in the back room -- far from being non-existent -- deserve serious and mature treatment, including record keeping. We ask, therefore, that the informal consultations be treated as what they are: private meetings of the Security Council to which the Charter and Council rules of procedure should apply.

Finally, we, like others, find the report of the Security Council -- this compendium of documents -- to be long and of only chequered benefit. Much of the information in that report is already available on the Web site and, in this age of computer and Web sophistication, we could dispense with a good deal of what is in the report.

In summary, the events of the past five weeks have demonstrated that the Security Council can respond well to threats to international peace and security. Our job -- the Council's job and the Assembly's job -- is to continue to work to develop better means of cooperation, better habits of transparency and better processes of accountability to make the Council the fully effective organ that the dangerous world we now live in demands.

Mr. Manalo (Philippines)

I should like at the outset to thank the Permanent Representative of Ireland, Ambassador Richard Ryan, for introducing this year's report of the Security Council to the General Assembly.

Article 24, paragraph 3, of the Charter mandates the Security Council to submit annual reports to the General Assembly, while Article 15 mandates the General Assembly to consider these reports. Thus, as the only United Nations organ which receives an annual report from the Council, we believe that the General Assembly should view this mandate not only as an opportunity for exchanging views on the matters the Council is seized of, but also as a means for conveying to the Council the Assembly's views on the Council's work and decisions.

At this and previous sessions, delegations have commented upon certain aspects of the format, content and presentation of the Council's report and, in this regard, have suggested improvements. We hope these suggestions will continue to be taken into account by the Council with a view to improving the presentation of the report.

Given the large number of issues and activities covered in the Council's report, I wish to confine my statement to just some of them.

Of the many country and regional situations of which the Council was seized during the period covered by the report, my delegation wishes to highlight that of East Timor. In this regard, the Council's efforts must be commended. To date, the successful recent elections have certainly been the high point of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor, which is in many respects a historic and nation-building mission. Full independence will be the next step. Nevertheless, an appropriate international presence and level of assistance will be needed after independence. The size, composition and nature of the presence should also be determined in consultation with the East Timorese people. In the final analysis, the future of East Timor lies in the hands of its people.

We also feel that the Council should play a role in helping to defuse tensions in the Middle East. At the same time, it is clearly recognized that terrorism is a threat to international peace and security. We have no doubt that the Security Council, particularly through its Committee created by resolution 1373 (2001), will monitor this issue in a sustained and vigorous fashion. We hope that the Council will stay in close touch with Member States with respect to implementing Council resolution 1373 (2001), as well as on other matters connected with our fight against terrorism.

Some of the country situations discussed in the report also touch upon or allude to a number of related issues with regard to which my delegation believes more interactive consideration among the Council, the General Assembly and Member States could prove useful. These include issues such as sanctions, consultations with troop-contributing countries and conflict prevention.

Regarding sanctions, experience has shown that they have inflicted a heavy toll on civilian populations and third parties. The Council's efforts to develop the concept of targeted sanctions, where pressure is focused on those responsible rather than on the innocent, is therefore a positive response in this regard. Resolutions such as 1343 (2001), which imposed a travel ban and an embargo on diamonds, is a concrete example of this response.

Given the importance of further work on this issue, we believe that the general membership would find it helpful if the report were to include, perhaps as an appendix, the summary records of the meetings of the Council's sanctions Committees, without prejudice to the confidentiality of the work of those Committees.

An issue inherent to the various peacekeeping operations discussed in the report -- one that is discussed in some of the monthly assessments of the Presidents of the Council -- is that of consultations with troop-contributing countries. We wish, in particular, to cite the monthly assessment of Singapore's presidency, which summarizes the key issues raised by troop-contributing countries during an open debate of the Council on that issue. In our opinion, those views clearly point to the need for triangular consultations and the institutionalization of those consultations during all stages of deliberations on a peacekeeping operation. We therefore urge the Council to continue addressing these concerns. The adoption of resolution 1353 (2001) is an important step forward. We nevertheless look forward to further substantive improvements which take into account the outstanding proposals of the troop-contributing countries.

The prevention of armed conflict is an issue raised in the report on which interaction between the Council, the General Assembly and Member States will be needed, especially with regard to the structural prevention of armed conflict, which entails dealing with the root causes of conflict. A number of the Secretary-General's recommendations on the prevention of armed conflict could provide useful input for such interaction.

The report of the Security Council also touches upon the Council's work on documentation and working methods. As we are all aware, this subject is also being dealt with in the General Assembly Open-ended Working Group on Security Council reform. Hence, if information could be provided in future reports of the Council not only on the measures adopted by the Security Council in this area, but also on the reforms being considered by the Council's Working Group on Documentation and Procedures, the General Assembly's Working Group's work and deliberations would be greatly enhanced.

In the monthly assessment by the presidency of Bangladesh a number of issues were suggested for consideration by the Security Council's Working Group on Documentation and Procedures. It would be helpful to know the results of such consideration. We also support the recommendation of the Bangladesh presidency that the Council's Working Group consider the report of the General Assembly's Working Group on Council reform, especially on suggestions to improve the working methods of the Council. In the same vein, there is a need for the Security Council to maintain and, where appropriate, improve upon the measures it has already implemented to promote greater transparency of its work, such as those cited in the monthly assessment report of the United Kingdom presidency. My delegation also supports more dialogue between the Council's representatives and the General Assembly Open-ended Working Group on the working methods and procedures of the Council, using the format employed earlier this year in an Open-ended Working Group meeting.

The thematic debates of the Council mentioned in the report were very useful and should be continued. Nevertheless, we believe they should be more than debates. They should also aim at action-oriented objectives over a medium-term period. Thematic debates of the Council could also be synchronized with debates on the same issues in the General Assembly for the purpose of linking decisions or appropriate policy action by the Council and the General Assembly on these issues. One issue that comes to mind is the prevention of armed conflict.

I have referred to the monthly assessments of the Presidents of the Council because they serve as a good basis for analysing the Council's report. We therefore hope that the section on presidential assessments can be allotted greater prominence in future reports, perhaps as a separate chapter in the main body of the report. At the same time, it would be more than helpful if the Presidents' assessments were to refer to the highlights of the informal consultations of the whole on some of the key issues considered during their respective presidencies. Assessments of Security Council missions, where relevant, would also be useful.

We look forward in the coming years to substantive consideration of the report of the Council, not necessarily of the whole report, but at least of certain issues addressed in it. Moreover, our consideration should not be constrained by the one or two days normally allotted for this debate. As stated in resolution 51/241, on the strengthening of the United Nations system, this agenda item will remain open during the year to enable further discussion as necessary. Arrangements for further consideration of the report are also suggested in this resolution.

Finally, we also hope that the President of the General Assembly will be in a position to implement other aspects of resolution 51/241 pertaining to the report of the Security Council.

Mr. Sharma (India)

A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.

<type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'>: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe9' in position 4338: ordinal not in range(128)
      args = ('ascii', u'\n\t<p id="pg007-bk01-pa01">Let me begin by congra...esolution as ineffective as its predecessors.</p>', 4338, 4339, 'ordinal not in range(128)')
      encoding = 'ascii'
      end = 4339
      message = ''
      object = u'\n\t<p id="pg007-bk01-pa01">Let me begin by congra...esolution as ineffective as its predecessors.</p>'
      reason = 'ordinal not in range(128)'
      start = 4338