Georgian Ambassador Alexander Lomaia today accused the Russian Federation of using its position as a permanent member of the Security Council to pressure Secretariat officials into drastically altering the title and content of the Secretary-General’s latest report, which proposed a new security regime to help stabilize the Abkhazia region and ensure a “viable role” for the United Nations there.

Voicing the interests of civil society a day before the United Nations begins a three-day summit on the world financial crisis, the Global Social Economy Group called today for sweeping reform of international financial and economic institutions and practices that had contributed to the current global economic turmoil.

The outcome of the Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development in its third day at United Nations Headquarters provided a means for continued discussion, but in no way measured up to the extreme gravity of the situation facing developing countries, representatives of civil society groups told correspondents today, also at Headquarters.

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.

The United Nations should be the place that “educates the innocent and the victims” on how to deal with the world economic and financial crisis, Martin Khor, Executive Director of South Centre, said at a Headquarters press conference this morning.

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.