Ambassador Greenstock (Chairman, Counter-Terrorism Committee) briefed interested UN delegations on Wednesday 12 December on the work of the CTC. He said the CTC would begin discussing its work programme for its second 90 day period shortly.

The CTC had appointed two experts to advise it in its work: Dr Walter Gehr (national legislation expert) and Mr M R Sivaraman (financial expert). Ambassador Greenstock said the Secretariat had identified a further four possible experts for consideration by the CTC in the coming days. The Secretariat would continue to look for further qualified candidates.

The CTC had reached agreement on the process for handling the reports. Three Sub-Committees had been established, and would each deal with one third of the reports split along alphabetical lines. The Sub-Committees would be chaired by the three Vice-Chairmen of the CTC. Each report would be considered first by the expert group, who would advise the Sub-Committee on the content of the report. Member States would be invited to attend the Sub-Committee's discussion of the report. Following the discussion in the Sub-Committee, the reports would be submitted to the CTC. The CTC would be looking in particular at whether each report needed to be followed-up and whether the State concerned would need assistance in order to meet the required standards.

The Chairman would then write to the State concerned setting out the Committee's conclusions. The CTC expected to review half the reports by the end of February and to have dealt with all of them by the end of March. It was therefore important for Member States to meet the 27 December deadline for the submission of reports.

Ambassador Greenstock confirmed that a directory of contact points had been issued. A revised list would be published at the end of January and every two months thereafter.

The CTC had received a briefing from Bacre Ndiaye, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) at its meeting on 11 December. The OHCHR's presentation would be circulated to all states.