General Assembly

At a Headquarters press conference today, Assembly President John Ashe (Antigua and Barbuda) welcomed civil society’s participation in determining the post-2015 development agenda as the “new norm”, and highlighted, among other changes, steps towards a new openness during the sixty-eighth General Assembly session.

The Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, Palitha T.B. Kohona, was elected Chair of the Sixth Committee (Legal) on 1 October 2013.

Janne Taalas, Deputy Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) on 1 October 2013.

Carlos Enrique García González was elected Chair of the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) on 1 October.

Stephan Tafrov (Bulgaria) was elected Chair of the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) on 1 October.

Abdou Salam Diallo was elected Chair of the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) on 1 October.

Ibrahim Dabbashi, Permanent Representative of Libya to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) on 1 October.

John W. Ashe (Antigua and Barbuda) was elected President of the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly on 14 June 2013, while serving as Permanent Representative to both the United Nations and the World Trade Organization since 2004.

The world should not ease the pressure on Iran’s nuclear programme as that country positioned itself to “race across the red line” before the international community could prevent it from building nuclear bombs, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said today as the General Assembly concluded its week-long general debate.

As the General Assembly entered week two of its annual debate, Canada’s Minister for Foreign Affairs said he rejected the “pernicious notion” that human dignity could be “sliced up, compartmentalized or compromised”, since it was impossible, in a pluralistic society, to protect some human rights and freedoms while infringing others.