AGERPRES special correspondent Doroteea Purcarea reports:
Romania’s Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos said Wednesday, the second day of his trip to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, many countries support Romania’s bid for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council.
“This is a matter that I’ve approached and I am approaching systematically at each bilateral meeting I had and will have. A dozen countries confirmed support for the bid, but there is still work to do,’ Ciolos told a news conference at the headquarters of Romania’s Permanent Mission to the UN.
Romania is running for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council for 2020-2021 in the elections to be held in 2019 in New York City. It submitted its bid in late 2006, one year after ending its previous tenure in 2004-2005. Its counter candidate for the seat given to the Eastern-European Group is Estonia.
Ciolos also stressed that Romania did not make any commitment in addition to what it had already pledged to do in terms of coping with the refugee crisis.
“I want to be perfectly clear: Romania has not made any other commitment in addition to what it has pledged to do in Europe; what I presented at yesterday’s event was Romania’s contribution to the allocation of refugees in Europe on voluntary bases, the figures Romanian has already pledged to follow,” Ciolos told journalists.
He added that during Tuesday’s event he spoke about Romania’s involvement, with human and material resources, in solving the problems at the root of the ongoing migration crisis.
He also pointed out that, in his conversation with his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau, he discussed Canada’s support for the establishment of a Black Sea multinational brigade.
Asked whether he discussed with Trudeau the numbers of Canadian troops to be contributed to the brigade, Ciolos said, “We have not gone into details because that is a matter to be discussed by the defence ministers; I and Premier Trudeau, we just reconfirmed Canada’s intention to support Romania in these steps for the multinational brigade and probably with case-by-case presence in military training exercises in the Black Sea.”
According to the Romanian Government, Ciolos and Trudeau on Tuesday also discussed lifting visa requirements for Romanian nationals travelling to Canada and Canada’s contributions to making operational the decisions of the Warsaw NATO Summit related to the strengthening of the eastern flank of NATO, particularly the Black Sea zone.
PM Ciolos heads the Romanian delegation at the UN general Assembly in New York where he participated in a series of events on the side of the meeting, including a high-level summit on migration hosted by US President Barack Obama. The head of the Romanian Government also had several bilateral meetings on the side of the UN general Assembly. He discussed implementation of the Global Development Goals in the UN Agenda 2023 with President of the UN General Assembly Peter Thompson.
Official sources told AGERPRES that Ciolos underscored at the meeting the need for integrated, trans-sectorial solutions that combine, for instance, polices for poverty alleviation and policies for trade, industry, agriculture, and energy as well as the fight against climate change.
They also discussed the latest developments in the Balkans and the Eastern neighbourhood of the European Union, with Ciolos stressing on Romania’s bid for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council in 2020-2021.
Ciolos also met with Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas. The Romanian PM said Romania supports resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. More…