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UN chief says outgoing president of UN representative body has done "superb job"

13 September 2011 00:18 (UTC +04:00)

Baku_APA. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday praised outgoing General Assembly President Joseph Deiss, complimenting him on doing a "superb job" in his one- year post, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The secretary-general made the statement while addressing the closing ceremony of the 65th session of the UN General Assembly.

Ban said that Deiss, a Swiss national who became the president of the 65th General Assembly session in September last year, showed that the General Assembly can play an important role "in meeting the major challenges of our time." The presidency of the General Assembly rotates each year among five groups of states -- African, Asian, Eastern European, Latin American and the Caribbean, and Western European and other states.

"You steered the assembly through three different delicate and important processes, a review of our peacebuilding architecture, a review of the Human Rights Council (HRC), and efforts of the continuing reform of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), but particularly your strong commitment for the reform of the Security Council has now paved a good foundation on which your successor will be able to build upon," said Ban.

He praised Deiss for presiding over a summit last September on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight international development objectives to be reached by 2015. Ban called the summit "one of the greatest successes of our history" at the United Nations.

"You also convened the many thematic debates and other meetings of consequences all of them focused on issues that really matter to the world’s people such as the rule of law, the green economy, and the responsibility to protect," the secretary-general added.

Deiss thanked the UN member states for their support and for helping the assembly make headway on three major components of the 65th session’s agenda -- poverty reduction and the MDGs, the green economy, and global governance.

He expressed his hope that the member states through the General Assembly "can continue to work together for humankind."

The session ended with a handover of the General Assembly president’s official gavel from Deiss to the president of the upcoming 66th session, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar.