A/RES/56/242 7. Welcomes the establishment of a permanent interpretation service at the United Nations Office at Nairobi, and notes with satisfaction that the conference-servicing facility at the United Nations Office at Nairobi is becoming organizationally, functionally and in terms of the budget an integral part of the Department of General Assembly Affairs and Conference Services; 8. Notes with appreciation the increase in the number of multilingual meetings to be held at the United Nations Office at Nairobi and with the participation of the Nairobi interpretation team elsewhere in 2001 and 2002, as well as the cost-saving effect of the establishment of the Nairobi interpretation service for the regular budget in terms of temporary assistance; 9. Emphasizes the importance of providing adequate conference-servicing resources to all United Nations conference centres, for the effective and efficient discharge of their mandates; 10. Notes the improvement in the rate of utilization of conference facilities at the United Nations Office at Nairobi, as recorded during the most recent reporting period; 11. Urges 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 increase their use of the conference facilities at Nairobi; 12. Reiterates its request to the Secretary-General to assist the bodies mentioned in paragraph 11 of the present section in improving this situation, and requests the SecretaryGeneral to report to the General Assembly at its fifty-seventh session, through the Committee on Conferences, on the actions taken to that end; 13. Encourages all United Nations bodies and expert groups not subject to the headquarters rule to hold some of their meetings at the United Nations Office at Nairobi; 14. Strongly discourages any invitation for hosting meetings which would violate the headquarters rule, in particular for United Nations centres with a low utilization level; 15. Encourages the Secretary-General to continue to intensify efforts being made by the United Nations Office at Nairobi to attract more meetings to its facilities; 16. Reiterates its request to the Committee on Conferences 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; 17. priority; Reiterates that meetings of Charter and mandated bodies must be serviced as a 18. Decides to include all necessary resources in the budget for the biennium 2002–2003 to provide interpretation services for meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States upon request by those groups, on an ad hoc basis, in accordance with established practice, and requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its fifty-seventh session, through the Committee on Conferences, a report on the implementation of this decision; 19. Notes the importance of meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States for the smooth functioning of the sessions of intergovernmental bodies, and requests the Secretary-General to ensure that, as far as possible, all requests for conference services for meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States are met; 3