After Iraq, wars and territorial disputes in Africa will dominate the work of the UN Security Council this month, council president Jean-Marc de la Sabliere said on Monday.
De la Sabliere, French ambassador to the United Nations, said ”the Iraq dossier will take up a particularly important part of the work,” even though only two council sessions had so far been scheduled, both behind closer doors.
”Africa will take second place,” he told reporters, adding that 10 meetings were provisionally on the council’s programme, focusing on some of the most serious problems in the continent.
These include: ceasefires between Ethiopia and Eritrea and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), tensions in Burundi, the Central African Republic and Liberia, and the situation in Sierra Leone.
The council will also examine the dispute between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front over the Western Sahara, and is likely to discuss events in Ivory Coast in the second half of the month, De la Sabliere said.
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix is due to brief the council on Thursday for the first time since five new members joined the council on January 1.
Blix is expected to focus on the declaration which Iraq delivered to the council on December 8 of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missile programmes.
He is to make a fuller report on January 27, containing his first assessment of the inspection work which began in Iraq early last month. – Sapa-AFP