Kosovo:
UN envoy briefs Council of Europe on Serbian province’s
final status talks
30 January 2007 – The top
United Nations envoy in Kosovo today briefed the Council of
Europe on latest developments in deciding the final status of
the Albanian-majority Serbian province that the world body has
run since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid
ethnic fighting.
“Status will be a new
beginning for Kosovo,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s
Special Representative Joachim Rücker told the Council’s
Committee of Ministers’ Deputies in Strasbourg, France,
stressing the importance of a timely resolution of the issue
that will help greatly enhance stability in the region.
Mr. Ban’s Special Envoy
for Kosovo’s future status process Martti Ahtisaari is
to present his proposal for final status to the Serbian Government
and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian- led provisional authorities
on Friday, but no details have been released.
Independence and autonomy
are among options that have been mentioned for the province,
where Albanians outnumber Serbs and others by 9 to 1, but Serbia
rejects independence.
“Status continues to
be the dominant issue for everyone concerned with Kosovo and
the region of the Western Balkans,” Mr. Rücker said
today.
He also discussed with the
Committee and with the Council’s Secretary General Terry
Davis security, minority returns, protection of cultural heritage
sites and the general state of human rights, including the expected
appointment of an Ombudsperson.
In early 1999, the province
was the scene of atrocities and the forceful displacement of
hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians. After a three-month
intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
culminating in the arrival of troops, most of the Albanian population
returned to their homes within days.
But only some 15,600 returns
of ethnic Serbs, Roma and other minorities have been registered
out of the estimated 250,000 who fled after the withdrawal of
Serbian forces in 1999.
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Ban
Ki-moon kicks off first foreign trip as UN chief with talks
with European leaders
24 January 2007 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon today began his first overseas trip since becoming the
world’s top diplomat, meeting in Brussels with European
Union (EU) leaders on global issues ranging from the Balkans
and the crises in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, Somalia and
Côte d’Ivoire, to climate change and human rights.
“The European Union
and the United Nations have maintained a very strong partnership
and I regard the European Union’s contribution as vitally
important for the work of the United Nations,” Mr. Ban
told reporters after the meeting with European Commission President
Jose Manuel Barroso.
“We share the same goals
and principles: pursuing peace and prosperity and protecting
human rights all around the world,” he said, stressing
EU financial and political support for UN work around the world,
including development, fighting international terrorism and
combating pandemic diseases like HIV/AIDS.
“Our positions are on
the same page,” he noted after an earlier meeting with
EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy
Javier Solana.
After a meeting with North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Jaap De
Hoop Scheffer, Mr. Ban said he was “very much assured
and encouraged” by NATO’s contribution to peace
and security in Afghanistan and Kosovo with close coordination
and under the mandate of the UN.
“We discussed with members
of the Council, with Secretary-General Scheffer, how to increase
overall cooperation at the organisational level,” he added.
Asked about an initiative
by Italy, a non-permanent UN Security Council member, to seek
a moratorium on the death penalty, the Secretary-General said
there was a growing tendency to see some phasing out of the
death penalty, “and I encourage that trend.”
Mr. Ban, who succeeded Kofi
Annan as UN chief on 1 January, will tomorrow attend a donors’
conference in Paris, which will seek to help Lebanon recover
from the ravages of last summer’s war between Israel and
Hizbollah, calling it “one of the most important, serious
areas to which the international community needs to pay attention
and cooperate.” He also stressed the need to help Iraq
to restore political, social and economic stability.
From Paris he will go to the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for talks with President
Joseph Kabila and other senior government officials as well
as with peacekeepers and staff of the UN’s largest mission.
He will also address the National Assembly and make a brief
visit across the river to Brazzaville to meet with President
Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo.
He will then go to Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, for the African Union (AU) Summit where he said he
would discuss the Darfur crisis with Sudanese President Omar
el-Bashir, as well as conferring with African leaders on the
conflicts in Chad, Somalia and Côte d'Ivoire.
He will end his Africa tour
with a stop in Nairobi, where he will meet with Kenyan President
Mwai Kibaki, followed by a trip to the Netherlands, where he
will visit the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International
Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
After that, he is to go to
Washington for a meeting of the Middle East Quartet –
the UN, United States, Russian Federation and European Union
– which is seeking a two-State solution to the Middle
East conflict, with Israel and Palestine living side by side
in peace.
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UN envoy to present
future status proposal for Kosovo on Friday
23 January 2007 – A United Nations proposal for the future
status of the Albanian-majority Serbian province of Kosovo,
which the world body has run since Western forces drove out
Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid brutal ethnic fighting, will be
presented to a group of concerned countries on Friday and to
the parties early next month.
UN officials have not disclosed
details of the proposal which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s
Special Envoy for Kosovo’s future status process, Martti
Ahtisaari, will present in Vienna to the so-called Contact Group
– the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France,
Italy and Russia – who have been helping to seek a solution
for the province where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs and
others by 9 to 1.
Mr. Ahtisaari then travels
to Belgrade and Pristina on 2 February to officially present
his proposal to both sides, UN spokesman Michele Montas told
reporters in New York today.
The envoy will then wait for
feedback from the parties before sending the proposal on to
the Secretary-General, who will then transmit it to the Secretary-General.
“It will be up to the
Security Council to decide when it wants to consider Kosovo,”
Ms. Montas said.
Independence and autonomy
are among options that have been mentioned but Serbia rejects
independence, and the most recent UN report on the province
said Kosovo’s provisional ethnic Albanian Government and
Serbia remained “diametrically opposed” in their
views of the future status.
Mr. Ahtisaari had originally
planned to present his proposal to the parties last year but
postponed doing so until after Serbia’s parliamentary
elections on 21 January.
Since his appointment a year
ago, Mr. Ahtisaari has been holding talks with Kosovo and Serbian
delegations in Vienna but these have not progressed beyond technical
issues such as the decentralization of municipalities. A major
issue is providing sufficient security to encourage Serb refugees
to return.
In early 1999, the province
was the scene of atrocities and the forceful displacement of
hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians. After a three-month
intervention by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), culminating
in the arrival of troops, most of the Albanian population returned
to their homes within days.
But only some 15,600
returns of ethnic Serbs, Roma and other minorities have been
registered out of the estimated 250,000 who fled after the withdrawal
of Serbian forces in 1999.
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UN
poised to tackle international challenges, Ban Ki-moon tells
US audience
16 January 2007 – The United Nations has the potential
to enter another golden era equal to that of its early years,
despite the array of daunting challenges – from finding
peace in Darfur and the Middle East to long-term goals such
as climate change and improving the lives of the world’s
poorest – faced by the Organization, Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon said today.
In a speech to the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.,
Mr. Ban said the UN is capable of not just coping but thriving
as it tackles global problems, but only if it can strike a close
partnership with the United States that is free of fear and
mistrust.
“If I am to succeed
as Secretary-General, I will need our partnership to be strong,
deep and broad – politically, morally, operationally and,
not least, financially,” Mr. Ban said, noting the explosion
of expensive demands on the world body, especially in the areas
of peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance.
“We can build a new
golden era for the United Nations, if we work collectively to
make it so – and if the United States is with us, wholeheartedly
and consistently,” he said. “With the US actively
and constructively engaged, the potential of the UN is unlimited.
And with the UN’s potential fulfilled, the US can better
advance its aspirations for a peaceful, healthy, prosperous
world.”
Mr. Ban stressed that a constructive
partnership between the UN and the US, the world body’s
largest donor, “cannot, and should not, advance at the
expense of others. Every one of our Member States has the right
to be heard, whatever the size of its population or its pocketbook.”
He urged the US to become
a member of the Human Rights Council this year, saying “the
stakes are too high” for Washington to sit on the sidelines.
In return he vowed to strengthen
the UN’s capacity for dealing with major problems and
to reform its working culture, so that it has “a staff
that is truly mobile, multi-functional and accountable, with
more emphasis on career development and training.”
The Secretary-General also
outlined his key priorities in office, citing the Darfur crisis
in Sudan as a “story of broken hope” and the focus
of his first overseas trip, which will be to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
later this month for an African Union summit.
He called for serious and
renewed efforts to tackle the conflicts in the Middle East,
describing the situation in Iraq as “the whole world’s
problem” and emphasizing that he wants to turn the diplomatic
Quartet – the UN, the US, the European Union (EU) and
Russia – into a more effective mechanism for resolving
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He also pledged support for
Lebanon as it undertakes a physical reconstruction and attempts
to bridge gaps between its communities in the wake of last year’s
war.
Mr. Ban said working towards
a definitive permanent status for Kosovo and invigorating stalled
negotiations on disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation remain
priorities as well, especially the situation on the Korean peninsula.
But he underlined that efforts
to deal with peace and security issues should not overshadow
“equally important challenges” in other areas, especially
in lifting people out of poverty, illiteracy and despair.
“This year will have
to see real progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),”
he said, referring to the internationally agreed set of eight
targets for reducing socio-economic ills, all by 2015.
Mr. Ban also pressed for improvements
on tackling climate change, global health problems such as HIV/AIDS
and avian flu, and protecting human rights, emphasizing that
human rights must be a pillar of the UN work equal to security
and development.
During his visit to
Washington, Mr. Ban met with US President George W. Bush, as
well as both Democratic and Republican members of the US Congress,
including key members of the Senate and House committees dealing
with foreign relations.
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Secretary-General
Ban stresses Darfur, Middle East and conflict prevention as
key issues
8 January 2007 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon today told the Security Council that stepping up efforts
to resolve the Darfur crisis is one of his top priorities, warning
of an ever worsening humanitarian crisis in this strife-torn
part of Sudan, as he also highlighted the Middle East and UN
peacekeeping worldwide as other key challenges.
Mr. Ban, who was addressing
the Council for the first time since becoming Secretary-General
on 1 January, assured the 15-member body of his “deep
sense of mission, duty and dedication” during a debate
on threats to international peace and security, after which
the Council issued a presidential statement pledging to work
closely with the Secretary-General to deal with these issues.
“Some of our most acute
and persistent challenges are in Africa. One of my top priorities
will be to step up efforts to address the crisis in Darfur,
where the humanitarian situation is growing worse, despite all
the declarations and proclamations of the international community
over the past three years,” Mr. Ban said, adding he would
discuss this and other regional issues with African Union leaders
in Addis Ababa later this month.
He also pledged to “to
inject new momentum into our search for peace and stability
in the Middle East,” calling for a rededication to the
work of the Quartet – the UN, European Union, United States
and Russian Federation – in resolving differences between
Israel and Palestine.
Mr. Ban also highlighted other
countries, including Afghanistan and Kosovo, before focusing
on broader problems – such as terrorism, HIV/AIDS and
extreme poverty – that “present threats to the security
of people around the world, and to the entire international
community.”
“Responding to such
threats is, after all, one of the primary purposes of the United
Nations, and a particular responsibility of the Security Council,”
he said. “This is true whether we are considering the
threat of terrorism – a faceless enemy which knows no
boundaries – or weapons of mass destruction, which present
a unique existential threat to all humanity.”
“Both demand urgent,
sustained and comprehensive attention from the international
community. The same is true of HIV/AIDS and the other pandemics
that not only take a huge human, social and economic toll on
countries that can least afford it; they also pose threats to
peace and stability, in the devastation they wreak on capacity
and governance.”
Highlighting the “special
challenges posed by the cases of Iran and the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK),” Mr. Ban also called for more
to be done in the areas of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,
saying it is essential that the international community works
as one to address these challenges.
“I am committed to strengthening
and consolidating the work of the United Nations in this direction.
In such an endeavour, I shall try to play the role of harmonizer
and bridge-builder, and work to restore trust between Member
States and the Secretariat,” he said, while also stressing
the world body’s wider role in conflict prevention and
peacekeeping.
He also pledged to strengthen
the UN’s ability to play its role to the fullest extent
in conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.
“I see all of those as a continuum and the role of the
United Nations as one that must be coordinated, comprehensive
and consistent.”
All 15 members of the Council
took part in the debate, before Ambassador Vitaly Churkin of
Russia, which holds this month’s Council presidency, read
out a presidential statement pledging close cooperation with
the Secretary-General to address the myriad challenges to peace
confronting the world.
“The Council commits
itself to work closely and in a focused and action oriented
manner with him in order to better address the multifaceted
and interconnected challenges and threats confronting our world
within its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international
peace and security,” Mr. Churkin said.
“The Council reaffirms
its commitment to address the whole range of threats to international
peace and security, including armed conflict, terrorism and
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” he said,
recognizing “the essential role of the United Nations
in the global effort to combat terrorism, which in all its forms
and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats
to peace and security.”
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