MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UN General Assembly opens session, climate is major issue

Srgjan Kerim, President of the General Assembly

The UN General Assembly opened its 62nd session Tuesday with a call by its new president to strengthen the organization's capability to deal with world issues - climate change above all.

President Srgjan Kerim, the former foreign minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, called for strengthening and modernizing the UN "so it can rise to the challenges of the 21st century." "More than ever before, global challenges demand multilateral solutions," Kerim said in his opening speech before the 192-nation assembly. "The UN is the appropriate multilateral forum to take action." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a press conference before the assembly opening that Kerim had decided to make "Responding to Climate Change" the assembly's major theme for the year as the issue has gained worldwide attention. A series of UN-backed reports by world scientists earlier this year said that there was little doubt that increased carbon emissions by human activity has contributed greatly to global warming. "I will make sure that the meetings on this issue, and many others, are real working sessions dealing with hard facts and hard decisions," Ban said. More than 80 world leaders and dozens of foreign ministers are to address a one-day session on climate change Monday. The meeting is the start of months-long discussions on how governments should combat climate change, ahead of a major UN conference on the issue in Bali in December. Kerim said the debate Monday would help set the agenda of discussion and measures to deal with environmental issues, which are connected to those of development. Ban said the coming General Assembly session will be the "most intense period of multilateral diplomacy ever in the United Nations history." "As we move well into the 21st century, the UN is, once again, the global forum where issues are discussed and solutions are hammered out," he said. Following the opening of the assembly session, Kerim and UN officials were to prepare for meetings taking place this weekend and next week, at which time heads of state and government will speak in the assembly. Special meetings will take place Friday through Sunday dealing with the situations in Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East. On Sunday, the UN, the European Union, the United States and Russia - the so-called quartet on Middle East peace - will meet to review the situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Tuesday, leaders of the 192 UN members will begin a seven-day debate on world issues, from the continuing turmoil of the war in Iraq and peace in the Middle East, to social and economic concerns in developing countries. Leaders who have registered to address the assembly on Tuesday, the first of the seven-day debate include the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Kazakhstan, France, Nicaragua, Chile, South Africa and Afghanistan.