NEW YORK, Oct 6 — A UN spokesman said Monday that the UN General Assembly (UNGA) “is moving ahead” with planning for its special session on Covid-19, reported Xinhua news agency.
“The General Assembly is moving ahead with planning for its special session on Covid-19. This will be the first time the Assembly is holding a special session on a pandemic,” Brenden Varma, spokesman for the UNGA president, said at a daily news briefing.
“Today, the president is transmitting a letter to member states from the co-facilitators of the intergovernmental negotiations on the special session’s modalities. The co-facilitators are the permanent representative of Azerbaijan and the deputy permanent representative of Canada,” said the spokesman.
“The letter contains the draft resolution on these modalities. Negotiations on this will be held this Wednesday. The president will attend those,” Varma said.
Regarding the dates for the meeting, they will not be set until the resolution is adopted. But as the president said at his press conference last month, he would like to see the meeting happen before the end of the year, according to Varma.
Asked why it takes so long for the UNGA to hold its special session on Covid-19, the spokesperson noted that the UNGA president, in his press conference last month, made it clear that the meeting should be held as soon as possible. In fact, the UNGA president said it should have been held already as the discussion of this topical issue is so crucial for the health of the world.
Varma said that member states appeared to be “coalescing” around the dates of December 3-4. He added that the president is “in their hands on that.”
— Bernama
