A/60/PV.65 General Assembly

The Assembly has before it a draft decision entitled “Provision of conference services”, recommended by the Fifth Committee, to be contained in a report that will be issued at a later date. For the time being, the text of the draft decision is contained in document A/C.5/60/L.10. The text, as orally revised at the 32nd meeting of the Fifth Committee, reads as follows. “The General Assembly decides to provide full conference services to the informal consultations of the Fifth Committee beyond 6 p.m. and on weekends until the end of the main part of its sixtieth session and to report on any expenditure in the context of the second performance report on the programme budget for the biennium 2004-2005.” The positions of delegations regarding the recommendation of the Fifth Committee have been made clear in the Committee and are reflected in the relevant official records. May I remind members once again that, under paragraph 7 of decision 34/401, the General Assembly agreed that: “When the same draft resolution is considered in a Main Committee and in plenary meeting, a delegation should, as far as possible, explain its vote only once, i.e., either in the Committee or in plenary meeting, unless that delegation’s vote in plenary meeting is different from its vote in the Committee.” May I also remind delegations that, also in accordance with General Assembly decision 34/401, explanations of vote are limited to 10 minutes and should be made by delegations from their seats. Before we begin to take action on the draft decision, which for the time being is contained in document A/C.5/60/L.10, as orally revised, I should like to advise representatives that we are going to proceed to take a decision in the same manner as was done in the Fifth Committee, unless notified otherwise in advance. That means that, where a recorded vote was taken in the Committee, we will do the same. We shall now take a decision on the draft decision contained, for the time being, in document A/C.5/60/L.10, as orally revised. A recorded vote has been requested

I call on the representative of India to speak in explanation of vote.

A vote has been taken on a decision, and the decision has been carried. Let me just say that there are no winners or losers in this exercise. It is unfortunate that the Fifth Committee had to resort to a vote, but then the enormousness of the task before the Fifth Committee in terms of its discussions relating to the budget and the reform proposals that are before us had made it an extremely important and urgent issue. Many of us felt that it was essential to have conference services during weekends and nights if we were to be faithful to the Organization and to complete the tasks that had been given to us. I would just like to record my delegation’s regret that all efforts by all parties to reach a consensus decision on that matter did not ultimately succeed. That is, of course, no reason to give up our practices and methods of trying to find consensus where we can, and we should continue to try to reach consensus on the many decisions that are before us at this session.

The General Assembly has thus concluded this stage of its consideration of agenda item 123.