Minister Lehtomäki to New York for the opening week of the 61st Session of the UN General Assembly 

Press release 359/2006
14 September, 2006

Paula Lehtomäki, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, will participate in the opening week of the 61st Session of the UN General Assembly in New York. The opening week’s festivities will begin on 19th September. The Finnish delegation to the General Assembly will be led by Tarja Halonen, President of the Republic, who will also deliver a speech during the General Assembly. Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja is also a member of the delegation.

The traditional EU ministerial week will again take place during the General Assembly’s opening week. Minister Lehtomäki will head the EU delegation at the ministerial meetings scheduled with the Latin American Rio Group, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). These meetings are arranged as so-called troika meetings, which means that alongside the Presidency nation, the European Union is represented by the European Commission, the Secretariat of the Council of the EU and the future Presidency nation, which in this case is Germany.

The agenda of the meeting to be held with the Rio Group encompasses, among others, questions pertaining to activities of the UN, such as cooperation in human rights issues. In addition, reinforcement of the links between the EU and the Rio Group will be discussed. The UN’s activities are also a topic of discussion at the meeting with the Non-Aligned Movement.  Disarmament issues, too, that will be discussed during the meeting. In the meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council, attention will be focused more on the current situation in the Middle East. Matters to be discussed are the Middle Eastern peace process, Iraq and Iran.

Minister Lehtomäki’s programme also includes meetings with Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, and Kemal Dervis, Head of the United Nations Development Programme. The topical issues to be discussed concern the humanitarian situation in the Middle East and the work of the panel dealing with system-wide reform of the United Nations. During her meetings with, among others, the foreign ministers of Nepal, Nicaragua and East Timor, Minister Lehtomäki will discuss the domestic situation in those countries and their bilateral relations with Finland. With the foreign ministers of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, Minister Lehtomäki will discuss EU–ACP economic partnership agreements and Aid for Trade.

Further information: Juha Pyykkö, Adviser to the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, tel. +358 9 1605 6171