Trusteeship Council formally suspends operation: Palau admitted to UN.

The admission to the UN of Palau--the last of the Trust Territories--was an "historic moment", Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said on 15 December at a flag-rising ceremony to mark the event.

"Now, the task for which the Trusteeship Council had been created was fulfilled, bringing an end to a chapter in United Nations history", he stated.

Palau's President Kuniwo Nakamura said that for almost 50 years his country had been "proud to have the flags of the United States and the United Nations flying with its own", but this year those two flags had been "formally lowered as Palau became independent".

Earlier that day, the General Assembly, by unanimously adopting resolution 49/63, admitted the Republic of Palau to the UN as its 185th Member State.

The Security Council on 29 November, after recommending that action in its resolution 963 (1994), had also stated that Palau's admission marked the "culmination of an effort sustained over decades to bring self-determination to the Trust Territories in different corners of the world".

On 10 November, the Security Council had terminated the Trusteeship Agreement for Palau, by unanimously adopting resolution 956 (1994), and also determined that the "objectives of the Trusteeship Agreement have been fully met".

The same conclusion had been reached on 1 November by the Trusteeship Council, as it formally suspended operations after nearly half a century. It would henceforth meet "only on an extraordinary basis, as the need arose", its President Hubert Legal of France stated at the closure of the 1706th meeting.

On 17 October, the United States informed (T/1985) the Secretary-General that its Compact of Free Association with Palau--approved by a 68-per cent majority of Palauans in a 9 November 1993 plebiscite--"came fully into force on 1 October 1994".

In December 1990, the Security Council had terminated the 1947 UN Trusteeship Agreement for the three other entities of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands: the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, which both approved Compacts of Free Association with the United States; and the Northern Mariana Islands, which opted for Commonwealth status.