UNESCO. General Conference; 30th; Records ... - unesdoc - Unesco

46. M. OULD KHALIFA (Mauritanie) :
Merci, Madame la Présidente. Je vous prie de m'excuser si je demande à prendre la parole alors que la
liste est close. Je souhaiterais simplement faire une petite proposition complétant celle de la France, qui rendant à
César ce qui est à César, a suggéré l'ajout d'un nouveau paragraphe remerciant M. Marshall des efforts qu'il a
consentis pour désamorcer en quelque sorte les tensions. Je propose que dans ce nouveau paragraphe la
Conférence générale exprime également sa gratitude à sa Présidente, dont la proposition initiale, formulée dans
un esprit de conciliation, a permis à M. Marshall d'aboutir à une solution. Je vous remercie, Madame la
Présidente.
47. The PRESIDENT:
Thank you, Sir. I give the floor to the delegate of New Zealand.
48.1 Mr MARSHALL (New Zealand):
If I may, I would like to reply, not to the embarrassing pieces so much, but to some of the other
comments, just to explain one or two things. Firstly, I must say, Madam President, on the last paragraph I
basically agree with the representative of Saint Lucia that in a way it belongs here; but I am prepared to accept
the United Kingdom proposal for a preambular paragraph. As long as it goes somewhere and is said by the
Conference as a whole, and if that is the will of the meeting, I am prepared to accept that.
48.2 The second point I wanted to make, again in response to Saint Lucia, is that the reference in paragraph 5
is actually designed to pick up the very point that she made. We looked, in preparing this, at the standards of
conduct document from the ICSC, so that is what it refers to, even though it is not in capital letters.
48.3 Thirdly, while I agree with India and those who have supported India about delegating authority to the
Executive Board, I am in a little bit of a difficulty. My own view is that we should not be concerned with some of
this business at all, and that the more these matters are delegated, the better … but this is what we are stuck with!
My difficulty is that I worked through this text with a number of people - and I want to acknowledge their
contribution in a moment - and I do not want to do anything here which might rock the boat, if you understand
what I mean. I did not run this proposal past those with whom I consulted, and would prefer not to go back to the
STU to say “Oh, by the way, we have done something else”. I might be too cautious, perhaps, I readily admit
that, but I am so nervous about getting this through that I do not really want to do anything which looks different
from what I have talked with others about, and would prefer that that proposal, which I basically agree with, were
referred to the next General Conference.
48.4 And, finally, Madam President, I should acknowledge the fact that this was not a solo act. I want to
thank the staff of the Secretariat for their very constructive role in helping me to get to this position on behalf of
my own delegation, and, in particular my own colleague, Mr Bachiri, from my Administrative Commission
secretariat. And I want to pay tribute to the role that the leadership of the STU played in at least working through
these resolutions, because some of them impact on them as well, and I think it was helpful to have their assistance
in drafting all this work. And, Madam President, I am grateful for the comments. I do find it interesting that one
can be vilified one day and praised the next day; I think yesterday I was probably, as my colleague from Kenya
reminded me last night, one of the demons of this place and it is strange how one can change overnight into a
slightly different character, and I do not really particularly mind that! This is almost certainly the very last act I
will perform for UNESCO, as I complete nine years with the Organization, and I am relieved, I might say, that it
looks as if the last thing I do will have a happy consequence - depending, of course, on the outcome of the vote
we are about to have. Thank you, Madam President.
49. The PRESIDENT:
Thank you, Mr Marshall. If I understand correctly, you would rather keep the text as is. Can the
representative of India give us his reaction to this?
50.1 Mr RAO (India):
Thank you, Madam President. First of all, I would like to support the suggestion made by one of the
distinguished delegates. I think that in expressing our thanks and appreciation we should include the President of
the General Conference as well as the representative of New Zealand. We should not forget that it was you who
took the unusual initiative, when you found that the running of the Conference had to be improved, making
certain suggestions, although as the distinguished delegate of Nigeria has said, this could have been settled two
days ago. I am sure the editors who will finalize this resolution will take care of it.
50.2 On the second point, all is well that ends well and I do not want to just make suggestions, but since there
was support for paragraph 6 to be a separate resolution, and taking into account the suggestions made by the
distinguished delegate of the United Kingdom, one of the thoughts that comes to mind is that it might be adopted
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