Ban regrets lack of progress in Kuwaiti missing nationals, property issues

N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday expressed regret that no substantial progress was achieved on the issues of missing Kuwaiti nationals and property, and therefore recommended the continued financing of the High-level Coordinator Gennady Tarasov\'s mandate until the end of the year, urging at the same time Iraq and Kuwait to begin exploring \"other arrangements\" to consolidate their cooperation. In his regular six-month report to the Security Council on the issues, Ban, however, said the increased cooperation between Kuwait and Iraq, as well as the proactive efforts on the part of Iraq with regard to the search for missing Kuwaiti and third country nationals as well as Kuwaiti property, \"should be commended\". \"I encourage Iraq to continue taking further practical steps\" towards fulfilling its obligations under relevant resolutions,\" he said. He added that joint exploratory missions in Iraq within the framework of the Technical Sub-Committee (TSC) of the Tripartite Commission (TC) and under the aegis of the international Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) \"appear to be an appropriate and concrete\" mechanism to probe the fate of missing Kuwaiti and third country nationals. \"A total of more than 7,000 trenches have been dug. Although no remains of victims have been discovered, these missions represent, in the view of the participants, a serious professional endeavour which has the potential to become an effective functional mechanism to uncover the fate of missing persons,\" he said. He added that similar TSC missions have continued to explore \"possible grave sites of Iraqi military personnel in Northern Kuwait. Thus, the activities of the TSC include the search for both Kuwaiti and Iraqi nationals\". Ban noted that while working in close contact with the members of the TC and its TSC, which remains the \"primary body to deal with persons unaccounted for since the Gulf War of 1990-1991,\" Tarasov focused his efforts on \"facilitating and promoting joint exploratory missions, ... to sites on Iraqi territory where missing Kuwaitis may have been buried\". He recalled that in May, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari reaffirmed Iraq\'s determination to fulfil all outstanding obligations towards Kuwait and ensure his country\'s speedy exit from Chapter VII provisions. He also recalled that while Baghdad\'s preference is to conduct the work \"bilaterally or through some other arrangement besides the Coordinator\'s mandate, it would not object to other forms of international involvement to assist further progress\". On the missing Kuwaiti property, Ban said \"no substantial progress has been made in the search for the Kuwaiti national archive, nor has credible information about its fate, or whereabouts, emerged\". He welcomed Iraq\'s formation of a Committee to coordinate the search for Kuwaiti missing property, including the national archive. \"I look forward to the Committee\'s increased effort to ascertain the whereabouts of the Kuwaiti national archive\". He said although the Kuwaiti national archives have not been found, Iraq has \"demonstrated, by finding other missing Kuwaiti properties, that its credible and sustained efforts on this file can bear results\". He recalled that Iraq transmitted to Kuwait earlier this year old bank notes, coins, documents and keys for safes belonging to the Central Bank of Kuwait, as well as 15 microfilm cassettes containing the archive of the \"Al-Anba\" newspaper and 136 microfilms of the archive of the Kuwaiti newspaper \"Kuwait Al-Youm\". Ban said he was \"encouraged\" by the confidence and cooperation building process between the two neighbours, and expressed hope it will lead to \"tangible and practical results as soon as possible\". In this regard, Ban recommended to the Security Council, which will debate the issue next Tuesday, that the financing of Tarasov\'s mandate be extended until December 31st of this year in order to \"consolidate the progress made by Iraq\" so far in fulfilling its international obligations in relation to missing Kuwaiti persons and property. He also said \"I believe that both sides should begin exploring other arrangements to consolidate and ensure their continued cooperation in the search for missing Kuwaiti persons and property.\" He did not elaborate. He said \"tangible progress on this humanitarian file, along with other necessary steps by Iraq to comply with its outstanding obligations under relevant Security Council resolutions pertaining to the situation concerning Iraq and Kuwait, would provide a good basis\" to enable Iraq to exit from Chapter VII provisions.