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11 November 2004
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Thursday
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27 Ramazan 1425
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UN plans to hold summit next year
By Our Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 10: The delegates and officials at the United Nations met on Tuesday to make preparations for holding a major summit meeting of heads of state/government from around the world next year
which will seek ways to make the organization more effective and responsive to the world community.
Diplomats and officials said the event would be of "decisive importance," as it would review the progress on the implementation of development goals set by the 2000 Millennium Summit.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as they are called, are a set of eight time-bound targets for dealing with the world's problems, such as halving poverty and hunger, ensuring universal education and fighting the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, all by 2015.
A large number of countries, including Pakistan, participated in a discussion about the summit in the preparatory committee for the event. To facilitate discussions, Secretary General Kofi Annan has prepared a report which proposes that the summit be held in New York on 14-16 September, 2005, in the form of plenary meetings and four interactive roundtables.
Addressing the preparatory meeting Pakistan's UN envoy Munir Akram expressed the hope that the UN summit meeting would serve to strengthen and unite the United Nations, reflecting the aspirations of the entire membership.
Mr Akram stated that it would not be sufficient for the summit to adopt a broad declaratory agenda, but in fact there was a need to have concrete decisions on issues of vital interest to the larger UN membership.
He proposed that the preparatory process should be guided by three Cs: caution, comprehensiveness, and consensus. He elaborated by saying that we should move with caution so that the process was not led by the ambitions of a few states rather than the collective interests of the United Nations; pursue a comprehensive approach to evolve an integrated package of decisions, and take decisions by consensus in order to evolve united United-Nations.
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