MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New Chairman for United Nations C 24

Anthony Bryan Severin of Santa Lucia has been elected chairman of the Committee of 24, the United Nations Committee that deals with decolonisation. The appointment was confirmed as the C24 met this week.

Bashar Ja'afari of Syria was also elected as its Rapporteur. The C24 reports to the Fourth Committee which will meet in October.

The C24 meeting this week also decided that the postponed Regional Seminar will be held in November. Initially scheduled for May in Dili, Timor-Leste, that seminar had been postponed previously "due to circumstances beyond the Committee's control", until later this year in another location.

Fiji's representative informed the Committee that there had been consultations between countries of the region, and Fiji had agreed, in principle, to host the Regional Seminar in November this year. However, some more time was needed to confirm the invitation in writing. The representative of Papua New Guinea said that, should Fiji be unable to host the event, her country would be willing to do so.

Taking note of the information presented by those speakers, the Committee authorized its Chairman to hold necessary consultations in that connection and accept invitation to the Seminar on behalf of the Special Committee.

The Chair was also authorized to finalize the composition of the Committee's official delegation to the Seminar by adding two more members to it, one from the Asian Group and the other from the African Group of States. It had been previously decided that the delegation would consist of the representatives of Saint Lucia, Congo, Cuba, Syria and the Russian Federation.