UN Security Council to hold high-level Syria meeting

  02 September 2016    Read: 1129
UN Security Council to hold high-level Syria meeting
The briefing took place in the run-up to the 71st session of the UN General Assembly that will begin on September 13.
"[A] high-level meeting on Syria is going to be held on the morning of the 21st of September and will be presided over by our [New Zealand’s] Prime Minister, the Honorable John Key," van Bohemenn told reporters on Thursday.

Key has invited other heads of state to attend the meeting, the Ambassador noted.

Other areas the Security Council will focus on in September are the election of the next UN Secretary-General and the visit of a UN delegation, led by the US Ambassador to Senegal, to South Sudan.

Russia’s Churkin to Preside Over Upcoming UN Secretary-General Election

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin will preside over the next round of votes for the UN Secretary-General, President of the Security Council for September van Bohemen also stated.

"Because New Zealand has a candidate involved in the election, I will not myself be presiding over straw polls and my colleague Ambassador Churkin from the Russian Federation has kindly agreed to take that role upon himself."

The next straw polls are due to take place on September 9, 26 and the first week of October.

Among the candidates are UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Prime Minister of Portugal Antonio Guterres.

Current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s term concludes on December 31. Historically, the Secretary-General has been selected based on an informal system of regional rotation but it is a matter of convention and not a rule.

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