MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Gibraltar to address UN Decolonization special session

A referendum will be organized in Gibraltar in 2008 to decide on UN options

The United Nations Fourth Committee, the Special Political and Decolonization, meets this Monday for an opening session under the Chairmanship of Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad from Sudan.

Members of the new Bureau, Hossein Maleki (Iran), Viktoriia Kuvshynnykova (Ukraine), Alexandrous Vidouris (Greece), Vice-Chairpersons, and Renier Valladares Gómez from Honduras, Rapporteur. Gibraltar is set to appear before the Committee next Monday having requested a rescheduling of its appointment this week because of the election. The newly elected Chief Minister is expected to address the session at what will be the first appearance before this Committee since the new Constitution was adopted in Gibraltar. It is likely that the Opposition leader would also attend. It is widely anticipated that discussions on a consensus text between Britain and Spain could be intense with Britain not only rejecting Spain's territorial integrity arguments but also having stated that it no longer considers its relationship with the Rock to be colonial. In its manifesto the GSD has said that as a Government it has fully argued Gibraltar's case, and "such is the irrational position of the Committee of 24, that Gibraltar rightly no longer looks to it to affirm our decolonisation." "The UN has made itself irrelevant to our decolonisation and has left us with no option but to achieve it bilaterally with the UK. We will continue to press the UN to modernize its decolonisation and delisting criteria and to recognise the reality that we have effectively achieved decolonisation by moving into a modern, mature, non-colonial relationship with the UK, accepted by the people of Gibraltar in an act of self-determination," it says. But the Alliance in its manifesto takes a different view. "The best practice in the decolonisation process, reflected in the literature of the UN, is that the people should have all the options explained to them to be able to choose freely which they prefer. In this context, a referendum will be organised in Gibraltar in 2008, as a consultation exercise, on the options provided by the UN for decolonization. In this referendum, people will be asked to select what would be their preferred option, if all the options were available to us. It will include the option of Devolved Integration and will serve to show how support for the different options, is distributed amongst our people." Meanwhile, according to their work program, the Fourth Committee will consider the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples It is set to consider related items, such as information from Non-Self-Governing Territories transmitted under Article 73e of the United Nations Charter, economic and other activities that affected the interests of the peoples of the Non-Self-Governing Territories; implementation of the decolonisation Declaration by United Nations specialized agencies and associated international institutions; and offers by Member States of study and training facilities for inhabitants of Non-Self-Governing Territories.