The following statement was issued today by the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

The new Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, Peter Wittig, presented his credentials today to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this morning approved a draft decision by which the new staff rules described in a report published by the Secretary-General in August should remain provisional, pending the General Assembly’s further consideration of the new contractual regime at its sixty-fifth session.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, today, 3 December, in New York:

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks on the thirtieth anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, today, 3 December, in New York:

As it concluded in Nairobi, Kenya, today, the High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation encouraged developing countries –- with support from developed countries and international organizations –- to take concrete steps to make their cooperative efforts work better in tackling the serious challenges they faced in achieving socio-economic advancement.

Top officials of the United Nations Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, briefing the Security Council today, called for Serbia’s sustained assistance in apprehending two high-level fugitives accused of atrocities in the Balkan wars of the 1990s and pressed Kenya to cooperate in the case of an at-large suspect in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

A regional United Nations workshop on implementing United Nations Security Council resolution 1540 (2004) will be held from 7 to 10 December in Cairo, Egypt.

The Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families expanded from 10 to 14 members today, as 9 members were elected during the fourth meeting of the States Parties to the United Nations treaty on migrant workers.

Calling it a “criminal attack”, the Security Council this afternoon condemned “in the strongest terms” today’s terrorist attack in Mogadishu, Somalia, which killed and injured innocent civilians at a graduation ceremony for Somali medical students, resulting also in the deaths of the Ministers of Health, Higher Education and Education of the Somali Transitional Federal Government.