Participating to the UN’s General Assembly, Corlatean chaired the inaugural meeting of political Forum for sustainable development.
Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Titus Corlatean participated on Tuesday at the 68th session of the UN General Assembly where Romania holds the Vice Chair position.
According to a Foreign Ministry (MAE) release, he emphasized, addressing the meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers held in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the need for reinforced international efforts towards identifying a political solution to the Syria crisis.
The Romanian chief diplomat also welcomed the recent agreement between the U.S. and the Russian Federation on the rapid and safe destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. The Romanian official said that this agreement must be accompanied by a firm UN Security Council resolution that should determine the fulfillment of the commitments undertaken by Syria in this respect.
Referring to the Iranian nuclear file, Titus Corlatean stressed the importance of a comprehensive long-term solution based on the implementation by Iran of the resolutions of the UN Security Council and of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Romanian chief diplomat also expressed hope that the new leadership in Tehran confirms the more constructive and engaged attitude manifested by the country’s new Foreign Minister as concerns the settlement of the file in the established “E3 +3” negotiation format. Nonetheless, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, and the foreign ministers had a broad exchange of views on topical international issues, debating the theme of the Eastern Partnership, the developments in the Southern Neighborhood of the Union – with a focus on Syria – and the Iranian nuclear dossier.
Also on Tuesday, Corlatean chaired the interactive segment on global partnerships for development within the inaugural meeting of the high-level political Forum for sustainable development.
The debates occasioned by the opening of the Forum, in the presence of the UN General Assembly’s President John Ashe, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the UN Economic and Social Council’s President Nestor Osorio, and the World Bank Group’s President Jim Yong Kim, highlighted the Forum’s pivotal role in the institutional architecture for sustainable development, especially in terms of implementation of policies and decisions of this agenda.
Special emphasis was laid on the need to balance to approach in an integrated manner economic, social and environment dimensions in defining the new agenda for the post-2015 development, the MAE informs.
“In his speech from the position of moderator of the interactive segment of global partnerships for development, Minister Titus Corlatean underscored the particularity of the results of the UN Conference for Sustainable Development Rio+20, which highlights the need for the involvement of all actors for development: <<Change starts with each of us, but we have to act beyond national borders. We need to turn rhetoric into reality and to advance global partnerships between the rich states and the poor ones. The financial crisis should not be a justification for decreasing assistance for development or perpetuation of bottlenecks in multilateral trade negotiations>>,” reads the release.
The session chaired by the Romanian top diplomat included, among the key-speakers, the President of Nauru, Baron Divavesi Waqa, Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif.
“Among the recurring issues in most interventions were the calls for adopting by 2015 an ambitious global agreement on climate changes, for reversing the trends of contraction in the official assistance for development and those in favor of strengthening the partnerships for development,” MAE informs, as well.
The decision to set up the high-level political Forum was one of the key-results of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. Agreed through Resolution GA 67/290, adopted by consensus on July 9, 2013, were the format and the organizational aspects of the Forum which will be convened under the aegis of both the General Assembly and the ECOSOC.
A day ahead the UN General Assembly, the Romanian minister had meetings with representatives of the business community in the United States, such as companies of the American-Romanian Business Council (AMRO) and representatives of the Board of the Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce (RACC).
During the discussion with representatives of US companies, the head of Romanian diplomacy presented the business and investment opportunities Romania offers, underscoring the government’s goal of consolidating financial stability and developing the investment climate. At the same time, Minister Corlatean invited the AMRO leadership to take part in the activity of the Working Group on economic and commercial matters attached to the bilateral Task Force on implementation of the Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century between Romania and the United States of America.
Poll: Romania scepticism of Syria military intervention at 37.5 pct
A proportion of 37.5 pct of Romanians do not consider the use of chemical weapons is a justification for a military intervention in Syria, found a poll conducted by INSCOP Research at the commissioning of the ‘Adevarul’ daily. Awareness of the Syrian conflict is high, with 73.7% of the polled reporting that they had heard of it, while 20.7 per cent said they had not heard of the events there, and 5.6% not knowing or refraining from responding on the subject. The survey was conducted during September 10-17 on a sample of 1,050 respondents and is representative of the Romanian population aged 18 and over.
