Egypt renders discussion on Millennium Summit UN draft successful

The unofficial deliberations to prepare the Millennium Summit draft communique ended yesterday under the UN General Assembly President and Foreign Minister of Namibia Theo-Ben Gurirab.

"The UN Assembly is expected to refer the draft statement to the Summit on Friday for ratification, Egypt's permanent delegate to the world organization" Ahmad Abul Gheit said Tuesday.

"The draft statement represents full consensus of member states regarding the principles and values that should govern international relations in the coming period," he added.

It also represents the member states agreement on ways of tackling challenges facing the world in the fields of security, economic development, disarmament, uprooting of poverty and protecting environment.

"The draft also tackles means of promoting the role of the international organization in the coming stage," Abul Al-Gheit said.

"In the past two months, Egypt effectively contributed to the drafting of the resolution and the difficult negotiations that led to it," Abul Gheit said.

"Most significantly, Egypt managed to mobilize the necessary international support to cancel a phrase in the draft resolution that encouraged foreign intervention in the distribution and management of trans-river waters," he added.

"The Egyptian delegation was also able to keep a clause calling on the international community to hold a global conference to examine ways of cleansing the world from weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"The Arab group successfully managed to retain the sentence that said that nations under occupation had the right to self determination and aborted the Israeli scheme to cooperate with big states to re-draft the relevant principles in the UN Charter," he added.

"They also confronted Israeli attempts to amend the paragraph on the right of refugees and dispersed, to return to their homes," he said.