President of the Republic of Slovenia meets UN Secretary-General

New York, 22.9.2008  |  press release

The President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr Danilo Türk, is attending the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly this week and will be one of the speakers during the general debate on Wednesday, 24 September 2008. The President will be participating in meetings of leaders who will be discussing Africa's development needs and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals; moreover, he will be holding a number of bilateral meetings and lectures as well as participating in various roundtable discussions.

By way of introduction, the President of the Republic had a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the UN Headquarters in New York yesterday evening local time. Their talks focused on a number of topical international issues, in particular on progress made in implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, on issues related to global warming and on the crisis areas Georgia and Kosovo.

Both leaders agree that, in the case of Georgia, the question is how the United Nations should develop its role in Abkhazia, where the United Nations Observer Mission has already been present for 14 years. This mission’s mandate will expire shortly, and President Türk therefore advocates its extension in an unchanged form, while at the same time new ways of solving the crisis in Georgia should be sought, based on the agreement the European Union reached with Russia and Georgia.

After the meeting, the President of the Republic said that, by carefully selecting its priorities, the United Nations is capable of substantially changing the world in the long term. In his opinion, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and action in respect of global warming should be at the forefront of the United Nations’ strategic endeavours in order to transform relations in the future in the same way as in the case of human rights.