Some 650 million of the world’s 1 billion poorest people depended totally on animals for their livelihoods, Mike Baker, Director-General of The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), said at Headquarters today.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
An extensive investigation, launched Monday, into charges of fraudulent voting in Afghanistan’s recent elections was moving forward with the aim of delivering results as soon as possible, Edmond Mullet, United Nations Assistant-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping said today at a Headquarters press conference.
Rescue efforts were winding down and emergency relief getting into full gear in response to the successive natural disasters that recently hit Asia and the Pacific, John Holmes, Emergency Relief Coordinator, told correspondents at Headquarters this afternoon.
General Assembly President Ali Abdussalam Treki of Libya, in his first press conference since the close of the Assembly’s annual general debate earlier this week, said this year’s gathering, had drawn more than 100 world leaders who had demonstrated their sustained interest in the United Nations and a wide array of crucial issues ‑‑ from climate change to the financial crisis to human rights.
During the month of October, the Security Council would hold two open debates in which non-Council Member States could participate, respectively, on “women, peace and security” and on the situation in the Middle East, Council President Le Luong Minh, the Permanent Representative of Viet Nam, said today.
Iran was open to continuing international dialogue, even at the summit level, on a range of issues, including security and economic matters, Manouchehr Mottaki, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iran, said as he answered correspondents’ questions this morning.
Nature’s destructive power was on full display in the Asia-Pacific Region, where the Philippines, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga were reeling from successive devastating disasters, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said at a Headquarters press conference today.
“The world is witnessing a new wave of interest in advancing disarmament goals,” the United Nations Secretary-General’s High Representative for Disarmament Affairs said today during his press conference at Headquarters providing an overview of last week’s historic Security Council summit on nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, as well as other related events.
Members of the Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) -- a three-year-old organization seeking an observer status with the United Nations -‑ updated correspondents on the organization’s work and spoke about their meetings with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and senior United Nations officials, at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.
At a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, France’s Secretary of State for Cooperation and Francophonie, Alain Joyandet, harshly condemned Monday’s attacks by Guinean soldiers on crowds of unarmed civilians at a pro-democracy rally in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, which left some 100 people dead and hundreds more injured.