UN 66th General Assembly Begins
United Nations, Sep 13. -The 66th regular session of the UN General Assembly opened Tuesday with a agenda plagued by crises, problems and actions that are contrary to the organization's.The president of this session will be Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, who was Qatar's permanent representative to the UN for the last 13 years, and who replaces Swiss Joseph Deiss.
After several days of work, a high-level meeting on the prevention and control of non-transmissible diseases will be held Sept. 19.
Another meeting, "Responding to desertification, soil degradation and drought within the context of sustainable development and the eradication of poverty," will be held Sept. 20.
Also on the list is high-level forum on Sept. 22 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and the Action Program adopted by the UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance.
The general debate of the new session period and the traditional speeches by presidents, governors and foreign ministers will take place Sept. 21-27.
It is expected that the Palestinian National Authority will ask the General Assembly to recognize a new Palestine state, despite U.S. threats to veto that request in the Security Council.
Regarding Latin America, the program includes issues such as the situation in Haiti and Central America, the U.S. blockade of Cuba, and the Malvinas Islands issue.
The first issue related to Latin America among the almost 170 official agenda points is "The Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial, and Financial Blockade Imposed by the United States of America against Cuba."
This will be the 20th consecutive year the UN Assembly discusses this theme, and like the 19th previous times, it is expected that the plenary will condemn Washington's siege of Cuba for the last 50 years.
During the last session, 187 countries voted for Cuba's resolution against the blockade, while the United States and Israel voted against it, and the Marshall Islands, Palau and Micronesia abstained.
That section also includes "Central America: progress for the configuration of a region for peace, freedom, democracy and development" and "the question of the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands," a territory occupied by Britain and over which Argentina claims sovereignty.
The issue of "The situation of democracy and human rights in Haiti," where the UN still has some 14,000 soldiers and police stationed after the January 12, 2010 earthquake that devastated that Caribbean nation. (Prensa Latina)
