Activities of Secretary-General in Austria, 26-27 November

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Vienna on Monday morning, 26 November, after an overnight flight from New York.

The Secretary-General first held talks with Austrian President Heinz Fischer, and then with Michael Spindelegger, the Foreign Minister, including over lunch.  Those meetings focused on developments in the Middle East, Africa and South-Eastern Europe.

The Secretary-General next visited the United Nations Office in Vienna, where he held a town hall meeting with United Nations staff based in Vienna and met staff from the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law — UNCITRAL  — the main United Nations body dealing with international trade law.  He then met Yury Fedotov, the Director General of the Office, who is also Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

He had a separate meeting with the outgoing and incoming Executive Secretaries of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, Tibor Toth and Lassina Zerbo, who briefed him on their work, including in the CTBTO Operations Centre.

That evening at the Hofburg Palace, the Secretary-General attended the inauguration ceremony for the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue.

He said he welcomed the Centre’s commitment to opening its doors to all the world’s religions and that he fully supported its vision of religion as an enabler of respect and reconciliation.  He encouraged the Centre to cooperate closely with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.  (See Press Release SG/SM/14675.)

The Secretary-General left Vienna on Tuesday morning, 27 November, to fly back to New York, where he arrived the same afternoon.