The international community must set stronger targets to curb the pollution causing global warming and act to address new industrial threats to a rapidly melting Arctic environment, Prince Albert II of Monaco said today at a Headquarters press conference, where he was joined by fellow members of the Aspen Institute Commission on Arctic Climate Change.

“Now is your moment to act,” the Secretary-General told the nearly 100 world leaders gathered today for the high-level Summit on Climate Change that he has convened with the aim of mobilizing political will for a fair, effective and ambitious climate deal.

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.

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.

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.

The Security Council, in a summit meeting this morning presided over by the United States President, adopted resolution 1887 (2009), which, among other things, calls upon the States that are party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to comply fully with all their obligations and fulfil their Treaty commitments.

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.

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.

Amre Moussa, Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, at a Headquarters press conference this morning, outlined his views on the situation in the Middle East and the prospects for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.