GCC protest UN plan to increase Bahrain’ contribution to PKO

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Addressing the financial and budgetary committee of the General Assembly, also known as the fifth committee, Mohammed Aqeel Ba-Omar said "we would like to express our deep concern (that) one of the GCC developing countries has been unjustly classified within a high-level of scale similar to (20) developed countries category." Ba-Omar was referring to Bahrain but did not mention it by name.

Therefore, he added, "any proposal to reopen discussion on reviewing the current scale should be based on correcting the current status of this particular country and placing it back with the rest of the developing countries which enjoy a certain percentage of contribution discounts." Ba-Omar insisted that there should be, therefore, a "clear distinction between developed and developing countries in connection with their contributions to the peacekeeping operations.

He stressed that GCC countries "strongly believe that peacekeeping operations play an integral role in – the maintenance of international peace and security – and should be adequately financed with all the necessary resources in order to carry out their mandated tasks." However, he added, the GCC countries "firmly believe that based on the principle of collective but differentiated responsibilities, special obligations of the Security Council permanent members in the maintenance of international peace and security should be born in mind in connection with their contributions to the financing of peacekeeping operations." Bahrain pays less than 0.59 percent of the USD 7.75 billion PKO budget for the period 2009-2010.

 

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