11 September 1998

UN General Assembly

Press Release GA/9434/Rev.1

GENERAL COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS 166-ITEM GENERAL ASSEMBLY AGENDA

The General Committee, in two meetings held today, recommended 166 items for inclusion on the General Assembly's agenda for its fifty-third session and allocated them among the six Main Committees and the plenary.

Question of East Timor

The representative of San Marino, speaking on item 93 on the question of East Timor, said recent meetings between the Secretary-General and Portuguese and Indonesian officials and other subsequent discussions had been held without prejudice to the possibility of a special status for the Territory. It was hoped that agreement could be reached on the question before the end of the year. He stressed that the present momentum must be maintained and recommended that consideration of the item be deferred until the fifty-fourth session of the Assembly and included on the provisional agenda of that session.

The representative of Brunei Darussalam supported San Marino's proposal to defer discussion of item 93 to the fifty-fourth session of the Assembly. The item should also be included on the provisional agenda of that session.

The Committee recommended deferral of the item until the fifty-fourth session.

It proceeded to recommend inclusion of items 94 to 159.

Note from Charles Scheiner
U.N. Representative International Federation for East Timor -

Just for clarification for those not familiar with arcane UN processes, this is what the UN General Assembly has done every year for the past fifteen years or so. It's a way of keeping East Timor on the agenda while the Secretary General and various other UN agencies work on the problem. It continues the last resolution passed by UN General Assembly in 1982, 37/30, as current policy. Among other things, that resolution:

1. Requests the Secretary-General to initiate consultations with all parties directly concerned, with a view to exploring avenues for achieving a comprehensive settlement of the problem and to report thereon to the General Assembly at its thirty-eighth session;  
2. Requests the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples to keep the situation in the Territory under active consideration and to render all assistance to the Secretary-General with a view to facilitating the implementation of the present resolution;

For more information on Parliamentarians for East Timor, Please Contact: Sharon Scharfe, International Secretariat Parliamentarians for East Timor Suite 116, 5929-L Jeanne D'Arc Blvd., Orleans, ON K1C 7K2 CANADA Fax: 1-613-834-2021 E-Mail: pet@web.net

Back to September Menu
Back to Main Postings Menu & Site Search Engine