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Next UN Chief to Place Priority on Dafur

Ban Ki-moon, the eighth U.N. secretary-general, speaks in front of a copperplate in a corridor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Seoul, Tuesday. The copperplate was made in honor of Ban's inauguration as the United Nations' top administrator.

The next U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, indicated in Seoul on Tuesday that North Korea's nuclear crisis is not an urgent matter now because there are more pressing issues that need his immediate peace-building efforts.
During his visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ban pointed to the difficult situations in Darfur and Lebanon as his top agenda items and the places he plans to visit to find breakthroughs after his inauguration on Jan. 1.

Darfur is a region of far western Sudan. It is currently in the middle of an ongoing humanitarian crisis involving Arab janjaweed militias and black African rebels.

In Lebanon, the U.N. peacekeeping operation has been underway since 1978. It was recently reinforced after new hostilities broke out on the Israeli-Lebanese border last July.

Ban said the United Nations is currently overseeing 18 peacekeeping operations with around 92,000 multinational troops participating.


# The Korea Times [Deceember 27, 2006]

By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter