UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon picked up support for his proposed reforms on Friday, dropping a proposal to downgrade the UN disarmament chief and providing details on his plan to split the overburdened UN peacekeeping department.
Ambassadors emerging from a closed-door meeting with the UN chief on Friday were much more positive about his reforms than they were after an initial meeting on Feb. 5 -- but Ban still faced questions about the chain of command in the field in UN peacekeeping operations with two departments instead of one.
Ban, who took over as UN chief on Jan. 1, was confronted with a barrage of questions when he presented the proposals and was criticized by some ambassadors for trying to push them through quickly -- without going through the normal committee and budget procedures in the General Assembly.
"I think the atmosphere is clearly much better," Pakistan's Ambassador Munir Akram, head of the powerful Group of 77, which represents 132 mainly developing countries and China, said after Friday's meeting.
Germany's UN Ambassador Thomas Matussek, whose country holds the EU presidency, said "everybody supports the secretary-general" but many ambassadors expressed "a certain dissatisfaction" with the way the proposals were presented "and said they expect from him more transparency in the future."
In his speech to envoys from the 192 UN member states, which was released to reporters, Ban said: "I have taken account of your concerns and revised my proposals." He said he would also submit the reforms for full General Assembly consideration.
Ban initially wanted to merge the important UN departments dealing with political affairs and disarmament, both currently headed by undersecretaries-general, but was forced to abandon that idea because of opposition from developing countries.
He then agreed to keep the portfolios separate, but proposed that the Department for Disarmament Affairs become part of the secretary-general's office and be headed by a high representative with the lower rank of assistant secretary-general. That also drew widespread opposition, from developing countries as well as some developed countries who viewed the proposal as downgrading disarmament.
"Having heard strong views from member states," Ban told the ambassadors on Friday "I am ready to propose that the high representative would be appointed at the rank of undersecretary-general."
Ban said the high representative would report directly to him and be part of the top policy decision-making process in the UN Secretariat -- which would be a new and upgraded responsibility for the disarmament chief.
"The fact that he intends to keep it at undersecretary-general level certainly goes to dispelling ... some of those misgivings now," said Japan's UN Ambassador Kenzo Oshima. "And the fact that the secretary-general takes disarmament issues more closely into his hand is a move for the better in terms of strengthening the UN involvement on disarmament issues."
Pakistan's Akram said he expects the General Assembly to adopt a resolution broadly supporting the disarmament plan "very soon" as Ban requested.
But Akram said he would reserve judgment on the proposal to create a Department of Peace Operations and a Department of Field Support, both headed by undersecretaries-general, until after a committee meeting next week.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema