SECRETARY-GENERAL ARRIVES IN NAIROBI
Press Release
SG/T/2049
SECRETARY-GENERAL ARRIVES IN NAIROBI
19960430 NAIROBI, 28 April -- Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi on Sunday, 28 April, at 3 p.m. He was welcomed by the Vice-President and Minister for Planning and National Development, George Saitoti. Also present were a number of cabinet ministers, and permanent secretaries and the heads of United Nations agencies in Nairobi. After the official welcome, the Secretary-General delivered the following statement.I am delighted to be here. Nairobi is the capital of one of the most active and energetic members of the United Nations.
It is also home to two of the Organization's most critical responsibilities: that relating to the environment and to human settlements. In recent months, the United Nations Political Office for Somalia has been based here. All the agencies and institutions of the United Nations System are converging to Nairobi for our regular consultations on coordination and cooperation.
Kenya's support for the United Nations peace-keeping efforts has been excellent. You have made available air, land and sea facilities for United Nations related programmes in the region. Forty-six military observers and 38 civilian police from Kenya participate in United Nations peace-keeping missions. Your nation has served as a valuable point of transit for important United Nations assistance projects, particularly in Burundi, Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia.
His Excellency President arap Moi has been a consistent source of strength and support for the Organization. I look forward to discussing with him critical issues relating, in particular, to Africa, whose persistent problems are in many ways a challenge to the family of nations.
In this connection, I am encouraged by he international response to the United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa, which I launched last month in cooperation with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This is the first time that the United Nations will work in an integrated manner to promote the development of an entire continent. It is doing so at a time when we have the opportunity to redeem the prospects for Africa's economic recovery which are today greater than in recent years.
- 2 - Press Release SG/T/2049 30 April 1996
The Pelindaba Treaty establishing an African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone offers concrete proof of the capacity of nations in this continent to work together and in unity for an accepted purpose. It is my strong hope, as an African, that this same sense of mission will reinforce the response to the other great challenges that confront the African people. The international community too must play its legitimate role for support and cooperation to this endeavour.
Allow me to say once again how happy I am to be in this city with my colleagues, the heads of the specialized agencies and organs of the United Nations system, how happy I am to be in this city, one of the homes of the United Nations and also how happy I am to be in Kenya, one of the major supporters of the United Nations.
At 7:30 p.m., the Secretary-General attended a reception hosted by the Vice-President of Kenya, George Saitoti, in his honour.
In his welcoming statement, the Vice-President noted that the United Nations had recently emerged as the main player in international relations. He urged the strengthening of the United Nations Office at Nairobi as well as of the UNEP and Habitat as global focal bodies on matters of environment and human settlement. Finally, the Vice-President commended the holding of the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) in Nairobi, the first time the meeting has been held in the developing world.
In his reply, the Secretary-General stressed the danger of the marginalization of Africa. He stated that by holding its ACC meeting in Nairobi and UNCTAD IX at Midrand, South Africa, the United Nations had aimed at reversing the marginalization of Africa and cooperating with Africans in their course to peace and prosperity. (The full text of the Secretary- General's statement is available as Press Release SG/SM/5973 of 30 April.)
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