I thank you, Mr. President, for being with the Security Council once again and for convening today’s important debate. I also thank Secretary of State Pompeo for taking the time to join the Council today, and I welcome State Secretary Michaelis.
Last year we commemorated the centenary of the end of…
I thank you, Mr. President, for convening this important event on an important anniversary and for being with us today. I also thank His Excellency the German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs for being here. It was very good to hear from our briefers the Under-Secretary-General, Ms. Bellal and t…
I express my thanks to France and to you, Madam President, for having arranged this meeting. I also thank the Assistant Secretary-General for her briefing on this very sobering occasion.
I join others in condemning, in the strongest terms, today’s attack on the United Nations convoy in Benghazi. We…
I am sorry, but I cannot let some of the preceding statements go unchallenged.
The United Kingdom and its partners do not support terrorism. We fight terrorism wherever we see it. The Syrian representative’s last remarks were quite unjustified and wholly without foundation and I invite him to withd…
I will be brief. I just want to say for the record that the Security Council can discuss any issue it wants relating to international peace and security. The representative of Syria might like to know that nine countries called for this meeting and not a single country objected, so it absolutely is …
I thank the Under-Secretary-General and the two briefers from civil society.
We join other speakers in welcoming the fact that this long-overdue subject is now being debated in the Security Council. It is worth recalling that the arbitrary detention of civilians by the Syrian regime is one of the f…
I too would like to express our thanks to His Excellency the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Poland for being here today to conduct this debate. I join others in thanking all our briefers, particularly Ms. Kamara and Mr. Awan, for sharing their very compelling testimonies with the Security Council t…
I thank our two briefers today, Mark Lowcock and Susannah Sirkin.
I think we all feel that it is deeply frustrating that we come here month after month, but it is better that we come than we do not come. However harrowing it is, it is better that we hear what is happening in Idlib, than we do not h…
Once again I thank the Special Representative for his briefing and for the continued determination of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya to help de-escalate the situation in Libya and facilitate a return to the United Nations- led process.
This morning we heard a grave and alarming analysi…
I would like to begin by expressing our condolences to Tunisia for the death of the President, but I also wish to join my colleagues in condemning the recent attacks in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan, which are a very sad reminder of why peace is so essential. Afghanistan has suffered enough f…
I would like to start, if I may, on a different topic. I would like to join the Secretary-General in expressing our deep sadness at the passing of Mr. Yukiya Amano, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. I would like to pay tribute to Mr. Amano’s tireless work in the pursuit of …
I would like to thank our United Nations colleagues for their briefings and once again to ask them to pass on our gratitude to their teams on the ground, who are working tirelessly to try and help the people of Yemen.
I wanted to start, if I may, by once again expressing our full support for Specia…
I thank the Special Envoy and his team. What they do remains absolutely vital, however hard pounding it is on the ground.
I will start, if I may, with Idlib, where the Special Envoy started. We had a big debate about this earlier in the week (see S/PV.8561), so I will not rehearse all those points.…
I thank our briefers this morning.
The United Kingdom welcomes the Secretary- General’s seventh report on the implementation of resolution 2231 (2015) (S/2019/492). We extend our thanks to the Secretariat staff for their continued
professionalism and the support they provide to the Secretary-Gener…
That was a very moving conclusion from Mr. Lillie.
I just wanted to say that I would like the record to show that I did not get answers to my questions from someone who ought to have been able to answer them and that, for as long as we do not have answers to those questions, the types of suffering,…
It is dangerous to humanitarian workers on the ground to allege a connection with the Al-Nusra Front when none exists. I want to put that on the record because that could really put lives at risk.
At the outset I should like to thank the briefers.
I think Mr. David Lillie was right to challenge us. Humanitarian workers deserve our praise, thanks, admiration and, above all, Security Council efforts to protect them. I am sorry that those efforts have been found wanting. I will come back to tha…
Before I start on the Middle East, I would just like to say how sorry we were to hear about the terrorist attack on 16 June in Nigeria, near Maiduguri, which killed at least 30 people. The press statement on that attack (SC/13852) that the Security Council just issued is welcome, but our sympathies …
We welcome the Special Representative of the Secretary-General back to the Council and thank him for his briefing. We also thank our Afghan colleague for hers. I am very pleased to welcome Ms. Samar back to the Council; I knew her well when I was in Kabul two years after she became the first civil s…
I thank both Under- Secretaries-General for their respective briefings. Through them, I should also like to pay tribute to and thank all United Nations personnel and humanitarian workers on the ground in Syria and neighbouring countries who are risking their lives to try and make the situation bette…
