United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Lieutenant General Sikander Afzal (Pakistan) as the Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in Liberia.

A stable and steady approach on the part of the international community was required to ensure the long-term stability of Timor-Leste, Atul Khare, Special Representative of the Secretary-General, told the Security Council this morning.

Peace and security could only be achieved with strong regional action and strict compliance with existing arms agreements, otherwise the present arms races would erect stumbling blocks along the road to stability around the world, the Disarmament Committee heard today, concluding its thematic debate on regional disarmament and security, with the introduction of eight related draft resolutions, and opening its discussion on the disarmament machinery.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this morning recommended that the General Assembly endorse the recommendations of the Board of Auditors on the financial report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for the year ended 31 December 2008, for which the Board had issued a qualified audit opinion this year, with three emphases of matter.

United Nations Day will be observed this year at Headquarters with a concert to be held this evening, Friday 23 October, in the General Assembly Hall, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

As the Sixth Committee considered reports of its Working Groups on terrorism and criminal liability today, it took actions recommending that observer status in the work of the General Assembly be granted to three organizations.

The barriers blocking disarmament negotiations were beginning to come down, a clear sign of which had been the agreement last May in the Geneva Conference on Disarmament of a programme of work, after a decade-long impasse, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) heard today.

In a world where 1 billion people already suffered from chronic hunger, global food supplies must increase by 50 per cent to meet expected demand from a growing world population, the United States delegate told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today, as the Committee concluded its consideration of agriculture development and food security.

States would better serve their societies -- particularly vulnerable groups like women, the extreme poor and trafficked persons -- if they took a human rights-based approach in designing and implementing social, economic and cultural policies, the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) was told today as it rounded out its first week of discussions on the promotion and protection of human rights.

This is the text of a statement by the Spokesperson of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday on the attacks in Baghdad: