Mr. President, 

I thank Special Advisor Christian Ritscher for his briefing and welcome the progress UNITAD has made over the past six month. 

China has all along underscored in the Council’s previously deliberations that UNITAD is a temporary and transitional arrangement made by the Security Council in support of Iraq’s accountability efforts. In September this year, the Council adopted Resolution 2697, which renewed the Team’s final one-year non-extendable term until September 17, 2024. It is our hope that this request will be effectively implemented and the Team will consult fully with Iraq, formulate a practical and actionable exit strategy without delay, and complete the withdrawal in a timely and orderly manner. 

UNITAD should also work to ensure a timely and systematic handover of all evidence to the Iraqi government, so that evidence can be turned into a powerful weapon to hold terrorists accountable, thus completing the historic task of supporting Iraq’s accountability efforts. Recently UNITAD has reached an agreement with the Iraqi Government on modalities of evidence sharing with third countries. We welcome this. We hope that the Team will, as requested, inform the Iraqi Government of previously shared evidence files as soon as possible. 

Mr. President, Iraq is at the forefront of international counter-terrorism efforts and has made tremendous sacrifices in the fight against Daesh and in the recovery of territories occupied by terrorists and extremist forces. The international community should continue to steadfastly support Iraq in beefing up its counter-terrorism capacity building, combating terrorism, eliminating terrorist remnants, and consolidating the hard-won counter-terrorism achievements. 

Thank you, Mr. President.