MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Batlle to attend General Assembly of the United Nations.

President Jorge Batlle will travel to the United States between Sunday 19 and Thursday 23 to meet with world leaders on the issues of hunger and poverty and to attend the 59 Session Period of the General Assembly of the United Nations, as informed today by the Presidency of the Republic of Uruguay.

Batlle, who was invited by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, will take part of a summit of world leaders held in New York on Monday 20 with the aim to discuss ideas on cooperation for development and the struggle against hunger and poverty.

A report of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), released at the end of April in Montevideo showed that Uruguay is undergoing a recent in which poverty strikes more and more children".

The study revealed that 10% of babies suffer problems of chronic malnutrition and this figure increases to reach 16.7% among toddlers aged one to two years old. Chronicle malnutrition is defined as lack of food for an extended period of time.

The study, which involved research up until 2003, also showed that malnutrition had been significantly reduced between 1987 and 1996 and that current levels evidence a clear regression in the Uruguayan scene.

Batlle will also meet with the general secretary of the Organization of American States, Miguel Angel Rodriguez Echeverria in Washington on Thursday 23 and will later attend the debate of the 59 Session Period of the General Assembly of the United Nations, to be held at UN headquarters.