RPT - UN Office For Outer Space Affairs Looks To Russia For Additional Funding - Director

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th September, 2018) The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is looking to Russia to provide additional voluntary funding to be able to make progress on confidence-building measures and transparency, UNOOSA Director Simonetta Di Pippo told Sputnik on Tuesday.

"We would really love to have champions � countries which could on a voluntary basis provide funds to us... Russia could be one, if they have any intention of doing that, for sure," Di Pippo said.

The director stated that UNOOSA sought to also work on transparency and confidence-building measures with this funding.

"We have to work more with the [UN] Office for Disarmament Affairs in order to do outreach in transparency and confidence-building measures. In order to do that we need support from member states, also in terms of financing," the official said.

Di Pippo added that the current budget of UNOOSA only allowed the agency to engage in its core activities.

"The regular budget that we have is very limited and is only for the core function, which is capacity building in space services and application," she said.

De Pippo made the comments on the sidelines of the first UN Conference on Space Law and Policy, co-organized by UNOOSA and the Russian government in Moscow. The conference, which started in Moscow earlier in the day and will end on Thursday, seeks to draw the authorities' attention to developments in space law, and engage in knowledge-sharing about topical legal and policy changes in outer space. The conference will also seek to promote international cooperation on the peaceful uses of outer space in line with the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.