Source: United Nations (video statements)
The President of the Security Council for the month of August, Danish Ambassador Christina Markus Lassen, told journalists in New York that the Council is expected “to make progress” on the election of a new Secretary-General this month and said this was “arguably one of the most important decisions of the Council this year.”
The Council held its first straw poll on the participating candidates during the month of July, and Lassen said it is expected to conduct another round of later this month.
She said Council members are “very excited about it” and added that there was, “a lot of suspense and excitement” in the room.
Lassen noted that Denmark was one of the Council members “who argued in favour when we were discussing the modalities of these elections for more transparency and for actually releasing the polls.”
She said that after agreeing to keep the straw poll results confidential, it was “unfortunate” that results had been leaked.
Turning to Ukraine, Lassen, who was briefing correspondents on the Council’s program of work for the month, said, “since we entered the Council a little more than a year or a half ago it has been one of our main concerns not surprisingly, we’re in the neighbourhood.”
She said, “Russian attacks on Ukraine keep getting more and more brutal and more and more important in numbers, so to say,” and pointed out that “May and June were already the highest numbers of civilian casualties so far in the conflict. And we haven’t seen the final numbers for July yet, but I fear that that would be again beating that horrible record.”
The Danish Ambassador said, “a just and lasting peace has to, of course, be in accordance with the basic principles of the Charter and respecting every state sovereignty and territorial integrity. So, we believe that a peace has to be comprehensive to be a lasting peace. And that would be the principle we keep we’re working from. And also, the reason what we try to do this month in the Council.”