Press Conference

General Assembly President-elect Ali Abdussalam Treki ( Libya) pledged this afternoon that the priorities of his tenure would be the war on poverty in Africa, United Nations reform, disarmament, and implementation of United Nations resolutions, including those concerning the question of Palestine.

An absence of immediate action to address child labour worldwide would not only result in a global failure to do better in terms of combating that evil, but in a further deterioration of the situation, as the current economic crisis continued to have an adverse effect on developing countries, Piet de Klerk, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Netherlands, said at Headquarters today.

Following is the transcript of a press conference by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, held in New York today:

There was no threat of African States withdrawing from the Statute governing the International Criminal Court to protest the indictment of Sudan’s President Omer Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the President of the assembly of signatory States to the Statute said this afternoon.

Sierra Leone was a country where multilateralism had worked, the Executive Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone, Michael von der Schulenburg, said today at a Headquarters press conference, which followed a meeting with the Secretary-General today and a briefing yesterday to the Security Council on the situation in that country.

Today’s observance of the first World Oceans Day provided an opportunity to highlight the challenges of protecting the oceans, safeguarding their resources and preventing criminal acts at sea, a panel of ocean experts said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

The Coalition for the International Criminal Court called on the Security Council to press for the surrender and trial of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and others wanted for serious crimes committed in Darfur, at a Headquarters press conference this morning.

The Capital Master Plan for the renovation of the New York Headquarters of the United Nations was substantially on budget and on time, Assistant Secretary-General Michael Adlerstein told correspondents at a press conference this afternoon.

The Security Council’s programme of work for June would include open debates on United Nations peacekeeping operations, protection of civilians in armed conflict, and Iraq, the last to be chaired by Turkey’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, that country’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said at Headquarters today.

The Palestinian question was the “number one” priority for the League of Arab States, which was hopeful that the new United States Administration of President Barack Obama would formulate a policy capable of breaking the deadlock in the peace process, Arab League Secretary-General Amre Moussa said at Headquarters today.