General Assembly

The United Nations General Assembly this morning adopted the agenda for its sixty-sixth session during a meeting which required two recorded votes to allow representatives of Libya’s National Transitional Council to stand for the strife-torn North African country in the world body’s work for the coming year.

Hernán Salinas Burgos, Director of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, was elected Chair of the Sixth Committee (Legal) on 22 June 2011.

Simona-Mirela Miculescu, Permanent Representative of Romania to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) on 22 June 2011.

Haniff Hussein, Permanent Representative of Malaysia to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) on 22 June 2010.

Abulkalam Abdul Momen, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) on 22 June 2011.

Jarmo Viinanen, Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) on 22 June 2010.

“We come together at a critical juncture,” said the incoming General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser, as he opened the 193‑member body’s sixty-sixth session with a call to action on the United Nations to rethink the way it did business in the wake of ongoing global economic turmoil, popular protests that were upending once-stable Governments and the seemingly unending raft of natural hazards and man-made disasters.

Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser was elected President of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly on 22 June 2011. A veteran diplomat, Mr. Al-Nasser has contributed to advancing the multilateral agenda in the realms of peace and security, sustainable development and South-South cooperation over a career spanning nearly four decades.

The General Assembly’s incoming President, in his first Headquarters press conference this afternoon, said the sixty-sixth session would focus on the priority theme of mediation.