Press Conference

Energy was central to all aspects of development, the Ambassador of Belarus said today, urging United Nations Member States to bridge the current “energy divide” by, among other things, creating a global mechanism to ensure that all countries, especially developing nations and transition economies, gained fair and adequate access to technologies for new and renewable sources of energy.

Strategies to promote clean, renewable energy, especially in the developing world, where poor communities remained heavily reliant on wood and charcoal for most of their fuel, must be included in the global climate change deal expected to be reached in Copenhagen in December, Kandeh Yumkella, Chairman of the Secretary-General’s newly-launched Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change, said at Headquarters 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).

Following is a transcript of a joint press conference by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Special Envoy for Haiti, William J. Clinton, held today in New York:

General Assembly President-elect Ali Abdussalam Treki ( Libya) pledged this afternoon that the priorities of his tenure would be the war on poverty in Africa, United Nations reform, disarmament, and implementation of United Nations resolutions, including those concerning the question of Palestine.

An absence of immediate action to address child labour worldwide would not only result in a global failure to do better in terms of combating that evil, but in a further deterioration of the situation, as the current economic crisis continued to have an adverse effect on developing countries, Piet de Klerk, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Netherlands, said at Headquarters today.

Following is the transcript of a press conference by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, held in New York today:

There was no threat of African States withdrawing from the Statute governing the International Criminal Court to protest the indictment of Sudan’s President Omer Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the President of the assembly of signatory States to the Statute said this afternoon.

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.

Today’s observance of the first World Oceans Day provided an opportunity to highlight the challenges of protecting the oceans, safeguarding their resources and preventing criminal acts at sea, a panel of ocean experts said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.