NAM recommendation for the Security Council to visit Israel and Palestine – SecCo debate – Letter from South Africa/Chairman of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement

Letter dated 5 April 2002 from the Permanent Representative of South Africa

to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council 

I have the honour to refer to the open debate on the situation in the Middle East that took place in the Security Council on 3 April 2002, where virtually all participants stressed the importance of ensuring the immediate implementation of Security Council resolutions 1402 (2002) and 1397 (2002). During this debate, speakers expressed profound distress at the unprecedented levels of violence in the region, which constitutes a threat to international peace and security. Several delegations expressed fears that neighbouring States would be drawn into a wider conflagration and that the rage in the capitals of Arab States would boil over in response to the latest military operations in the Occupied Territory, including Jerusalem.

In my capacity as Chairman of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement, I have the honour to remind the Council of the recommendation already made by some of its members that the Security Council visit Israel and Palestine at the earliest possible opportunity. We believe that it would be important for the Security Council to witness the scale and severity of the crisis first-hand and to engage directly with the parties to the dispute as part of its mandate for maintaining international peace and security.

I would be grateful if you would circulate the present letter as a document of the Security Council.

(Signed) Dumisani S. Kumalo

Ambassador and Permanent Representative