United Nations Tackle Y2K
- — 11 December, 1998 21:49
Some 120 United Nations member countries are set to meet for the organisation's first international conference on the year 2000 problem.
On the agenda are discussions of how the UN countries can work together on issues of compliance, monitoring, contingency planning and crisis management, according to UN officials.
"The consequences of unpreparedness in any one country can rapidly spill over to other parts of the world, " said Ambassador Ahmad Kamal of Pakistan. Kamal organised the meeting tomorrow and is the chairman of the UN Economic and Social Council's working group on informatics.
"Many countries have barely begun to consider national responses and there is as yet no reliable overview of worldwide preparedness," Kamal said, speaking today at a meeting of countries organising tomorrow's conference.
The purpose of the meeting is mainly to organise a way of sharing information on the year 2000 efforts of UN member countries. Crisis management -- what to do if major disruptions of critical international services occur -- is likely to be a hot topic tomorrow, officials acknowledged.
Some of the working groups tomorrow will address the possibility of creating an emergency response system, according to officials here.
