We welcomed with hope the words of President Bush in his statement to this Assembly

We welcomed the successful withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the northern West Bank and Gaza earlier this year.

We welcomed your opening statement to the CD, providing your assessment of the relationship between the global security environment and the CD.

It is precisely for those reasons that we welcomed the agreements concluded on 15 November between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on movement and access from and to Gaza.

In that regard, we welcomed last month's Fourth Conference to Facilitate the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and its adopted declaration and set of measures.

Above and beyond our efforts at mediation, we have welcomed into our own territory over 200,000 refugees more than three times the population of the host areas.

We have therefore consistently welcomed the proposals to give an opportunity to countries that have the resources, the capacity and the will to make a particularly meaningful contribution to the work of the Security Council to participate in its decision making on a continuous and permanent basis.

In our last intervention, we welcomed the new procedures followed by the ICTR Chambers in restricting the length of examination in chief and cross examination, without unduly detracting from principles of fair trial.

In conclusion, I would point out that we warmly welcomed the statement made by the representative of China, and wish to congratulate his delegation in particular on the progress his country has made in the peaceful uses of outer space.

We also launched a new phase in our relations with partner countries opportunities for more individualized cooperation, a greater emphasis on defense reform, and a stronger focus on the Caucasus and Central Asia. Furthermore, we welcomed the interest shown by Russia and Ukraine in contributing to Active Endeavor, our anti terrorist naval operation in the Mediterranean, as another sign of the growing strategic value of our partnership with these countries.

We therefore welcomed the efforts now under way to correct these deficiencies through a collaborative, inter agency approach, in which UNHCR would be responsible for leading clusters of agencies with expertise in, respectively, protection, emergency shelter and camp coordination management.