ROBERT ORR, UN ASSISTANT SECRETARY GENERAL FOR

UNCLAS USUN NEW YORK 000573 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: CT PREF PREL SUBJECT: ROBERT ORR, UN ASSISTANT SECRETARY GENERAL FOR POLICY PLANNING PROVIDES UPDATE ON THE UN'S CT TASK FORCE ¶1. Summary: Ambassador Wolff and USUN Legal Advisers met with Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary-General for Planning and Policy Coordination in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General on May 22 to hear an update on the UN's Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF). Orr, the principal policy advisor in the Secretary-General's office on counter-terrorism and the interim Chair of the CTITF, provided an overview of where he thought the CTITF is going based on the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and in coordination with the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED). Orr focused on the institutionalization of the task force as the General Assembly called for when it examined its Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (Strategy) in September 2008 and asked for the United States to support funding of a position for the task force outside existing resources. End Summary. ¶2. Orr stressed that the UN has a great deal of potential to support a multilateral counter-terrorism effort. He noted that the arrival of Jean-Paul Laborde in New York in early June to assume the Chair of the CTITF offers a huge opportunity. CTITF has been approached by a number of countries who want to implement the UN Global Counter-terrorism Strategy but are reluctant to seek bilateral counter-terrorism assistance. CTITF plans to test a new tool, the Integrated Assistance for Countering Terrorism (IACT) with a few countries on a pilot basis. They had begun intensive work with Madagascar, a small country with an incipient terrorism problem, which had to be suspended in view of the recent governmental instability. They are now working with Nigeria, where the government has a counter-terrorism strategy, but the different governmental entities that need to carry it out are segmented off from each other. In the next few years, CTITF plans to focus on five or six more countries of high value. ¶3. Orr expressed the view that CTED, as a subsidiary body of the Security Council, is not transparent and that any major movement forward would only be realized through a combination of efforts including CTED, CTITF and the Terrorism Prevention Branch (TPB) of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Orr explained that two CTED employees would be temporarily detailed to cover two new posts established in the CTITF. This is only a stop-gap solution, however, and he asked for U.S. support to fund the positions through assessed funding. Acknowledging that the General Assembly's resolution that reviewed the Strategy in September 2008 called for institutionalizing the Task Force within existing resources, Orr said that the European Union is poised to support the funding of the posts as an increase to the budget and asked for the United States to support such an increase as well. Ambassador Wolff responded that the United States could support the new positions as long as the UN Secretariat could show an off-set somewhere else in the system. Orr said this would be difficult to do. RICE