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21 DECEMBER 1999

There is no plenary meeting today. Yesterday, the General Assembly concluded its debate on Security Council reform.

Tomorrow morning, the Assembly will consider 10 reports of the Second Committee (Economic and Financial). It will also take action on three draft resolutions on plenary items.

One of those drafts deals with assistance to Venezuela following the devastating floods and landslides (A/54/L.76). By adopting that text, the Assembly would express its solidarity, at this difficult time, with the Government and people of Venezuela in their efforts to cope with the serious humanitarian and material consequences of the disaster; would appeal to all Member States, the United Nations system, international financing institutions and non-governmental organizations to respond urgently and provide generous assistance to Venezuela in its relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts and programmes following the unprecedented calamity it has suffered, while expressing its gratitude to all who, with such great generosity, are providing assistance to Venezuela in the initial immediate relief work. The Assembly would express deep gratitude to the Secretary-General for the urgent steps he has taken to mobilize emergency humanitarian assistance, and would request him to make all necessary arrangements to continue mobilizing and coordinating humanitarian assistance throughout the UN system to support the efforts of the Venezuelan Government.

A second draft, on international cooperation on humanitarian assistance in the field of natural disasters from relief to development (A/54/L.74), would have the Assembly express deep concern at the increasing number and scale of natural disasters resulting in massive losses of life and property worldwide, particularly in vulnerable societies lacking adequate capacity to mitigate effectively long-term negative social, economic and environmental consequences of natural disasters. The Assembly would call upon States to adopt, where required, and to continue to effectively implement necessary legislative and other appropriate measures to mitigate the effects of natural disasters; and would stress the need to strengthen efforts at all levels to improve natural disasters awareness, prevention, preparedness and early warning systems.

A third draft relates to the causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa (A/54/L.75). By its provisions, the Assembly would request its President to put into effect the establishment of the open-ended ad hoc working group to monitor the implementation of the recommendations made by the Secretary-General in his report to the Assembly and Security Council on this subject, as well as those made by the Economic and Social Council at its substantive session of 1999. The President would also be requested, at the current session, to establish the ad hoc working group, to serve as its ex officio chairman, to designate two vice-chairpersons and to convene an organizational meeting of the working group not later than March 2000 to decide on modalities and develop arrangements for its effective functioning.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) is scheduled to do, this afternoon, everything I said it would do yesterday afternoon. The secretariat has informed me that, after the formal meeting, the Committee will go into informals and will work around the clock in the hope of reaching agreement on, and approving, the programme budget for the biennium 2000-2001 and sending it to the Assembly for final action.

Question: When do you expect the budget to be delivered to the General Assembly?

Answer: After the Committee meets, it will then go into informals. When it reaches agreement on, and approves, the budget, the Assembly can then agree to take action on the Committee documents rather than waiting for the reports to be translated into the official languages. They have done so in the past. I remember it happening years ago when I covered the Fifth Committee.