A/RES/53/208 Page 4 26. Notes with concern the difficulties experienced by some Member States owing to the lack of conference services for some meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States; 27. Regrets that 19 per cent of the requests for interpretation services made by regional and other major groupings of Member States were not met, while recognizing that meetings of Charter and mandated bodies must be serviced as a priority; 28. Decides to include all necessary resources in the budget for the next biennium to provide interpretation services for meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States upon request by those groupings, on an ad hoc basis, in accordance with established practice, and requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session, through the Committee on Conferences, a report on the implementation of this decision; 29. Urges intergovernmental bodies to spare no effort at the planning stage to take into account meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States, to make provision for such meetings in their programmes of work and to notify the conference services, well in advance, of any cancellations so that unutilized conference-servicing resources may, to the extent possible, be reassigned to meetings of regional and other major groupings of States; 30. Deeply regrets that the reports requested in paragraphs 9 and 15 of section A of its resolution 52/214 were not submitted to the General Assembly, and notes, in this context, that those reports were presented only in an oral form to the Committee on Conferences; 31. Requests the Secretary-General to submit the reports requested in paragraphs 9 and 15 of section A of its resolution 52/214 before 31 March 1999, and decides, without prejudice to the provisions of paragraph 8 (a) of its resolution 50/206 C of 23 December 1995, that an oral report cannot substitute for a report requested by the General Assembly; 32. Also requests the Secretary-General to ensure that the use of remote interpretation and translation will not affect the quality of interpretation and translation and will not in itself lead to a reduction of language posts; 33. Further requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session, through the Committee on Conferences and the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, a report on possible measures to alleviate the excessive vacancy rates in language services at some duty stations and ensure the required quality of conference services Secretariat-wide; 34. Requests the Secretary-General to intensify his efforts aimed at filling vacancies in language services at all duty stations; 35. Also requests the Secretary-General, when filling the posts of translators and interpreters, irrespective of the proposed contractual status of candidates, to take duly into account their professional qualifications, including pre-job training and experience, in order to maintain at all times the highest possible quality in the interpretation and translation services, and to ensure the equal treatment of language units of the Secretariat; 36. Stresses that the quality of interpretation in the six official languages should be improved in accordance with its resolution 52/214, and decides that the standards that govern the staffing of the interpretation booths shall continue to be observed; /...