ACTIVITIES OF SECRETARY-GENERAL IN VIET NAM, 23 - 24 MAY 2006
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Nane Annan arrived in Hanoi, Viet Nam, from Beijing, China, in the evening of Tuesday, 23 May.
They started the day Wednesday with a visit to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum where the Secretary-General and Mrs. Annan participated in a wreath-laying ceremony.
He then held a series of meetings with the Vietnamese leadership, beginning with President Tran Duc Luong, Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and culminating with the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, Nong Duc Manh.
In between those meetings, he met with women leaders in Viet Nam, where achieving gender equality is a national goal, and also with the National Avian Influenza Steering Committee. He also met with the United Nations country team and then with all United Nations staff.
At the end of the day, the Secretary-General met with the press and told reporters that on his first trip to Viet Nam, he had had some very, very good discussions with the leadership of the country.
He said Viet Nam and the United Nations enjoy a very special relationship based on 30 years of cooperation and shared principles including the central importance of national ownership of development policy and the belief that development must deliver a better life for everyone, not just for the privileged few.
He noted that that relationship extends to the Millennium Development Goals and that Viet Nam is a leader among countries in its category in achieving progress towards the Goals. The dramatic decline in recorded poverty over the past decade is a historic achievement, he said.
He also lauded Viet Nam for having taken the lead in the fight against avian influenza, with impressive results.
He took questions about his impressions of Viet Nam and the Iranian nuclear crisis and questions about being Secretary-General and the next Secretary-General.
In a separate programme, Mrs. Annan visited a self-help group of HIV-positive women and their children. Many of the women spoke of having been infected by their partners who were injecting drug users. The group provides care and support for the group members and the wider community, including life skills education and training in how to fight stigma and discrimination, access to counselling, testing and treatment, and prevention awareness activities. She also visited the Dong Da hospital’s HIV department that provides counselling, testing and treatment.
In the afternoon, Mrs. Annan visited a rural microfinance project in the Me Linh district outside Hanoi, where she met and spoke with women who had received small loans to purchase livestock and start small businesses. Several women spoke of increasing their income, educating their children and improving their status in the family and community. The project reports a 99 per cent success rate for repayment of loans.
In the evening, they attended a State dinner hosted by the President at the Government Guest House where they also heard a traditional musical performance.
On Thursday, the Secretary-General had no official programme. Concerned over developments in Timor-Leste, he spent most of the day telephoning leaders in the region including President Xanana Gusmão and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. He later issued a statement announcing that he would dispatch Ian Martin, head of the United Nations Human Rights Mission in Nepal, to Dili to assess the situation first-hand. (See Press Release SG/SM/10476.)
The Secretary-General and Mrs. Annan left Hanoi for Bangkok, Thailand, on Thursday evening for the last leg of his mission to Asia.