Press Conference

Roughly 20 years after last serving on the Security Council, New Zealand would again seek a Council seat for the 2015-2016 term, Prime Minister John Key said today during a press conference held after his first address to the General Assembly.

President Dimitris Christofias of Cyprus today called on Member States to use their influence in convincing Turkey to withdraw its troops from the island so that he could attend the next session of the General Assembly as a representative of the United Federal Republic of Cyprus.

President Johnson Toribiong of Palau announced today the creation of the first national sanctuary for sharks, encompassing the country’s entire exclusive economic zone, an area roughly the size of France.

An emerging new world was moving towards multipolarity after the collapse of cold war bipolarity and the failed attempt to impose unipolarity, President Hugo Chávez Frías of Venezuela said at Headquarters today.

Failing to respond to Somalia’s increased need would result in a “future of miserable destitution” and could tip the region into a far greater level of crisis, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Somalia said today.

Yesterday’s Climate Summit at United Nations Headquarters had achieved the Secretary-General’s goal of mobilizing political will at the highest level and focusing the attention of Heads of State and Government on the urgent need for action, Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Planning, said today.

The sixty-fourth session of the United Nations General Assembly faced three main challenges whose outcome would shape the international community’s response to the major issues on its agenda, Spain’s Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, said today.

There was broad consensus that the challenges of climate change could not be met without dealing with deforestation, Special Envoy of Papua New Guinea for Environment and Climate Change, Kevin Conrad, told correspondents at Headquarters after a high-level event on the topic concluded this afternoon.

Following is a transcript of the joint press conference by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Denmark’s Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, held in New York today, 22 September:

Reaching agreement at the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference on a new pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be a “daunting” challenge, but not an impossible one, Al Gore told correspondents today during a press conference of the United Nations Leadership Forum on Climate Change.