A/RES/53/208 Page 3 14. Also emphasizes the importance of providing adequate conference-servicing resources to all United Nations conference centres; 15. Notes with appreciation that the overall utilization factor for 1997 exceeded the benchmark of 80 per cent, in particular at Geneva and Vienna; 16. Notes the efforts by the Secretary-General to improve utilization rates of the conference facilities at the United Nations Office at Nairobi for 1996 and 1997; 17. Expresses concern that the conference facilities at the United Nations Office at Nairobi are still underutilized, as recorded during the period 1996–1997; 18. Reiterates its call for better utilization of the conference facilities at Nairobi; 19. Requests the Secretary-General, in view of the fact that the United Nations Office at Nairobi has been upgraded to a full-fledged United Nations centre, to explore the possibility of establishing a permanent interpretation service at the centre and to submit a comprehensive report thereon to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session; 20. Also requests the Secretary-General, without prejudice to the practices currently used to meet interpretation requirements, to examine the provision of interpretation services to other locations from permanent interpretation structures based in New York, Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi and to report thereon to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session, taking into account the request contained in paragraph 19 above for the establishment of a permanent interpretation service at Nairobi; 21. Invites all subsidiary bodies of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme and the Commission on Human Settlements and encourages Member States, intergovernmental bodies and regional and other major groupings to consider increasing their use of the conference facilities at Nairobi; 22. Reiterates its request to the Secretary-General to assist the aforementioned bodies in improving this situation, and requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session, through the Committee on Conferences, on the actions taken to this end; 23. Reiterates its request to the Committee on Conferences to continue to consult with those bodies that consistently utilized less than the applicable benchmark figure of their allocated resources for the past three sessions, with a view to making appropriate recommendations in order to achieve the optimum utilization of conference-servicing resources; 24. Requests that the Chairperson of the Committee on Conferences transmit a letter to the chairpersons of all bodies that utilized less than the applicable benchmark figure (80 per cent) of their allocated conference resources in the previous year, informing them of the problem and drawing their attention to the significant loss of meeting time, with a view to encouraging appropriate action on their part so as to improve the utilization of conference resources; 25. Notes the importance of meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States for the smooth functioning of sessional bodies, in view of the increased requests for meetings of regional and other major groups, and welcomes the fact that 81 per cent of the requests for such meetings were met; /...