Budget of UN mission for Sahara amounts to $ 50 million for coming fiscal year

The U.N General Assembly adopted without a vote a resolution under which the MINURSO (French acronym for the U.N mission supervising the referendum in the Sahara) will be granted nearly $50 million to finance its functioning from July 1st 2000 up to June 30th 2001.

Under the resolution-- that was adopted at the recommendation of the Fifth commission-the amount (49,317,037 dollars) includes 2,339,659 dollars that will be deposited at the account for peace keeping operations' backing. 365,778 dollars will be used for logistics, under the reservation of the Security Council decision to extend the MINURSO mandate beyond July 31st 2000.

The amounts allotted to the mission for the July 1st 1998-June 30th 1999 period were reduced from $60 million to $ 46.O3 million.

The General assembly took note that up to April 2000, several member countries have not paid yet their contributions and that the unpaid contributions amount to $77.2 million. Only 3 % of member states have paid the overall amount of their contributions, the resolution noted, asking the other concerned member states to pay their contributions.