Press Conference

Nature’s destructive power was on full display in the Asia-Pacific Region, where the Philippines, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga were reeling from successive devastating disasters, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said at a Headquarters press conference today.

“The world is witnessing a new wave of interest in advancing disarmament goals,” the United Nations Secretary-General’s High Representative for Disarmament Affairs said today during his press conference at Headquarters providing an overview of last week’s historic Security Council summit on nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, as well as other related events.

Members of the Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) -- a three-year-old organization seeking an observer status with the United Nations -‑ updated correspondents on the organization’s work and spoke about their meetings with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and senior United Nations officials, at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

A three-day open meeting taking place at Headquarters from 30 September would assess the evolution of risks and threats to implementation of Security Council Resolution 1540 (2004), which sought to prevent mass destruction weapons ‑‑ nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery -- from falling into the hands of non-State actors, correspondents were told today.

Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference held in New York today, 29 September:

At a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, France’s Secretary of State for Cooperation and Francophonie, Alain Joyandet, harshly condemned Monday’s attacks by Guinean soldiers on crowds of unarmed civilians at a pro-democracy rally in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, which left some 100 people dead and hundreds more injured.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and the Millennium Villages Project announced the launch of a new partnership aimed at dramatically reducing hunger and malnutrition across Africa, at a Headquarters press conference today.

In meeting after meeting, the intensity of activities on peace and security during the first week of the General Assembly’s sixty-fourth general debate had been incredible, the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, B. Lynn Pascoe, said during a press conference at Headquarters today.

Among the highlights of several very busy days that had begun with the opening of the general debate last week, the head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) mentioned the address by United States President Barack Obama and the adoption of a resolution on non-proliferation by the high-level meeting of the Security Council.

A diplomatic strategy by countries supporting the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was urgently needed to persuade and pressure the nine remaining States required to ratify the treaty so it could enter into force, Jessica Matthews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, said at Headquarters today.