United Nations: Ending an imbroglio over leadership of United Nations Security Council panels dealing with terrorism, Algeria has been appointed chair of the 1267 Sanctions Committee that has been dealing with Pakistan-based terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).
According to the list of chairs of the 24 committees and groups released this week, Denmark has been appointed head of the influential Counterterrorism Committee (CTC), IANS news agency reported.
Pakistan, which held up the appointments for five months with its demands to head the Counterterrorism and 1267 committees, was kept away from those two panels and given, as a compromise, the chair of the 1988 Taliban Committee, which effectively deals with Afghanistan, now run by the Taliban.
Guyana and Russia will be the co-chairs of the committee. Diplomatic sources said the Western countries on the Council opposed Pakistan becoming the chair of any of the main terrorism-related panels -- the CTC and the 1988 and 1267.
Those countries pointed out that Islamabad had a conflict of interest because it harbored terrorist organizations like the LeT and JeM, and its leaders, and had contentious relations with the Taliban ruling neighbouring Afghanistan.
In other appointments, Pakistan was made a co-chair with Greece of the Informal Working Group on General Issues of Sanctions, which makes recommendations on making sanctions more effective, but has no direct say on imposing or lifting sanctions. It was also made co-chair of the Informal Working Group on Documentation and Procedural Matters.
