Athens News Agency: News in English, 06-09-20

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] FM Bakoyannis addresses UNSC thematic debate on peace and security

[02] Papoulias continues state visit to Germany

[01] FM Bakoyannis addresses UNSC thematic debate on peace and security

Presenting the Greek SC presidency's theme Bakoyannis noted:

"I would like to begin the debate by making a statement in my national capacity.

"First of all I wish to express my gratitude to the Secretary-General for his presence here today. We greatly appreciate his tireless efforts to bring increasing significance to the issue of the relationship and cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations in maintaining peace and security.

"We fully share his stated vision, of a mutually reinforcing regional-global mechanism for peace and security, which in our view will prove critical to effectively addressing future threats and security challenges in the 21st century. We strongly urge the next Secretary-General to continue these efforts and further strengthen this partnership.

"I also wish to express my appreciation to the representatives of regional organizations for being here today to share with us their views and experience on this most important subject.

"This debate offers a good opportunity to discuss the developments that have taken place recently to implement resolution 1631 (2005), which was adopted last year under the Romanian Presidency. But most importantly, this meeting can stimulate an interesting discussion on the vision to create a ââRegional-Global Security Mechanismââ. The report of the Secretary-General, in response to resolution 1631, identifies challenges and opportunities to make the relationship with regional organizations more effective and paves the way for the construction of such a mechanism that will enable the world community to handle future threats and challenges in a more consistent and coordinated way.

"On our part, we would like to raise three issues which are relevant to the findings and recommendations of the above report.

"First, in the previous Security Council debates it was recognized that, given the nature of the new security threats, a greater involvement by international organizations in conflict prevention and management, in cooperation with the Council, is required. We fully subscribe to this position and we believe that a greater role by regional agencies in peace and security would not only lessen the burden of the Security Council in this area, but it would also increase the legitimacy of the Council by a more balanced input into its decisions and deliberations from various regions with different cultural, religious and historical background.

"Second, many important developments have taken place in this regard, particularly through the convening by the Secretary-General of the Six-High Level Meetings, that have high-level attendance and a broadening substantive agenda. The meetings have identified an important set of modalities for cooperation on conflict prevention and for guiding principles in peacebuilding. It is now important to ensure a more effective implementation of these principles in close coordination between the UN and international organizations.

"The Security Council on its part has conducted its own meetings with regional organizations and has developed an enhanced relationship with regional and subregional organizations, focusing on peace and security challenges such as conflict prevention and management, peacebuilding and counter-terrorism.

"However, despite the above developments, many challenges remain to be addressed to make this relationship more substantive and operational. While Chapter VIII of the Charter refers to regional agencies and arrangements and sets forth the functional relationship with the Security Council (Articles 52 and 53 of the Charter) it is silent with regard to their constitutional relationship with the Security Council. We believe that the time has come for greater clarity as regards a series of issues that will facilitate to shape the vision of a global-regional mechanism for peace and security, agreed by both the Security Council and the regional organizations. We need to identify regional and subregional agencies and to clarify the criteria on the basis of which these agencies are distinguished, for the purpose of applying Chapter VIII of the Charter, from other international organizations.

"Such clarity will give real meaning to the envisaged global- regional mechanism and should restore more authority to the Security Council and greater reliance on constitutionally delegated executive functions to genuine regional agencies under Chapter VIII of the Charter.

"The importance of this issue has been identified in the report of the Secretary-General, in response to resolution 1631, which emphasizes the need to clarify both the membership and the mandate of regional and other organizations to make coordination more effective and ensure a clearer collective effort. We endorse his recommendations on this issue and in this respect we have suggested in our concept paper some basic elements to be applied for the potential identification of regional and other organizations.

"We also support all the other recommendations contained in the above report.

"In conclusion, I would like to express our full support for all the efforts aiming at building the capacity of regional and other organizations. The UN and Member States should promote the capacity building of these organizations through the provision of human technical and financial assistance, if they really wish to develop an effective partnership. In this respect the Seventh High-Level Meeting that will take place immediately after this meeting, to which I have been invited as President of the Council to report on the findings and decisions of the Council, will focus on the implementation of the 10-year process of sustained capacity-building for African regional and subregional organizations. We are looking forward to the report of the Secretary-General on the UN contribution to this effect, in accordance with the World Summit Declaration."

[02] Papoulias continues state visit to Germany

Earlier, he concluded his contacts with German political leaders by meeting Brandenburg prime minister Matias Placek and visiting Potsdam. Papoulias is accompanied by Deputy Foreign Minister Evripidis Stylianidis.

In Potsdam, Papoulias and the Greek delegation accompanying him visited the Cecilienhof mansion where the Potsdam Agreement was signed between the then Soviet Union, Britain and the U.S., in August 1945.

Papoulias will continue his visit by travelling also to Cologne and Bonn where he will be meeting with local authorities, businessmen and Greek community members.

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