Foreign Ministry's press releases

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Finland in Tel Aviv have strived in recent days to ensure the consular rights of Finnish citizens aboard the Estelle ship.

By decision of Minister for International Development Heidi Hautala, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has granted its humanitarian assistance funds for the last part of the year, totalling 9.46 million euros, to people suffering from the world’s crises.

The UN General Assembly has voted on the member states to take up five non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council. The election took place in New York on 18 October. South Korea, Argentina, Rwanda, Australia and Luxembourg were elected. Finland was a candidate of the Western European and Others Group (WEOG).

Minister for Foreign Affairs Erkki Tuomioja will travel to New York on 16–18 October. Minister Tuomioja will participate in the UN General Assembly session on 18 October, when the vote for non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council for the years 2013-2014 will take place.

Minister for International Development Heidi Hautala will attend the EU Foreign Affairs Council Meeting of Development Ministers in Luxembourg on 15 October. The topics to be discussed at the meeting include global development goals after 2015, the EU’s support for transition societies as well as the continuum of humanitarian assistance and development cooperation in areas prone to natural and man-made disasters.

The EU Foreign Ministers will gather for a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg on 15 October. The meeting agenda includes the situation in the EU’s southern neighbourhood, the Middle East peace process, Iran, Mali, the EU’s Eastern Partnership and relations between the EU and China. Finland will be represented at the meeting by Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja.

Salvatore Lombardo, Director of External Relations for UNRWA, will visit Finland on Thursday, 11 October 2012. During his visit he will meet with cooperation partners of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs as well as parties interested in Palestine.

Minister for International Development Heidi Hautala will attend the Annual Meeting of the World Bank Group in Tokyo on 11–12 October. The central topics of the Annual Meeting are current challenges facing the global economy and their impact on developing countries. While in Tokyo, the minister will also meet with stem cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

On Friday, 5 October, the President of the Republic and the Cabinet Committee on Foreign and Security Policy discussed the implementation of the Oslo Convention on Cluster Munitions and follow-up to its impacts.

Foreign Minister Tuomioja suggests that in every crisis, the international community should strive to appoint one leading peace mediator who is supported by the others. Tuomioja spoke at the third ministerial meeting of the Friends of Mediation in New York. Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint UN and Arab League peace mediator to Syria, attended the meeting as an invited guest.