Meeting for the second day of its resumed session, the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today heard the proposed budgets of nine United Nations peacekeeping and integrated missions for the 2010/11 financial year, which ranged from $1.44 billion for the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) to $47.9 million for the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), tasked with maintaining the 1974 Israel-Syria ceasefire.

Following is UN Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon’s message to the opening ceremony of the Honduran Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in Tegucigalpa today, 4 May:

An event featuring a special screening of a documentary film entitled Countdown to Zero will be held at United Nations Headquarters on 5 May from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., Conference Room 4 (Temporary North Lawn Building).

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks on opening the exhibition “Putting an End to Nuclear Explosions”, in New York, 4 May:

Delegates to the eighteenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development today heard two panels of experts address the topics of transport and chemicals in parallel afternoon meetings.

Renewed political will might have overcome stalemates in the disarmament arena, but fell far short of the unified force needed to rid the world of nuclear weapons, ministers told the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as it entered its second day at Headquarters today.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's remarks, as prepared for delivery, to an international conference “For a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World”, at Riverside Church, New York, on 1 May:

Security Council members welcomed the European Union’s wide-ranging work with the United Nations on peace and security, as well as the potential for even stronger cooperation due to the new Lisbon Treaty arrangements, following a briefing by the first occupant of the Union’s consolidated security directorship.

With Nepal’s Maoists blocking the streets of Kathmandu in the fifth day of their general strike, the top United Nations official in that country warned the Security Council about the implications of the opposition party’s face-off with the Government, saying that the peace process “is at a delicate and critical moment” and the protests threatened to derail the four-year effort to hammer out a power-sharing agreement.

Strong efforts to advance the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East and define the contours of a legally binding international convention to eliminate nuclear weapons were urgently needed to prevent the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from being undermined, ministers and other officials warned the 2010 Review Conference as they continued into a third day of debate.