A viable climate change agreement was achievable before the critical Copenhagen meeting in December, but with only 200 days left, progress must accelerate, Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said at a Headquarters press conference today.

While natural hazards were unavoidable, especially given the growing threat of climate change, they only became disasters when they exceeded community coping mechanisms, according to the World Disasters Report 2009 of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

At a press conference held at United Nations Headquarters today on the margins of the Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development, a high-level panel of economic experts again stressed the need for long-term structural reforms of an international financial system that had helped contribute to the current economic crisis.

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.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues had an urgent mandate to activate the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples through national legislation around the world, members said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon on today’s opening of the Forum’s eighth session.

Eric Danon, Representative of France to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, said today that the two-week preparatory meeting for the 2010 Nuclear Non-proliferation Review Conference heralded a change in attitude towards the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and brought new momentum to talks.

A draft global plan of action to prevent trafficking in persons was not a panacea, but a “practical tool to further efforts in a focused way to achieve results”, Andrei Dapkiunas, Permanent Representative of Belarus to the United Nations, said today as he shed light on efforts to create a comprehensive United Nation strategy to address human trafficking.

Delegates at the just-concluded Third Preparatory Committee for the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference today adopted an agenda and reportfor the 2010 summit -- a “good omen” that reflected encouraging political realities and a fresh, cooperative spirit, which had eluded past meetings, Committee Chair Boniface Chidyausiku of Zimbabwe said at a Headquarters press conference.

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.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) should be eliminated in favour of regional monetary reserves or other collective measures, President Rafael Correa Delgado of Ecuador said at Headquarters this morning. “Wipe it off the face of the planet,” President Correa said at a press conference following his address to the Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development.