UN: Internal reform and the election of a new secretary-general to succeed Kofi Annan are expected to dominate the 61st session of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened in New York yesterday.
Bahrain's Sheika Haya Rashed al-Khalifa, the third woman to preside over the general assembly in its 60-year history, said that multilateralism should form the basis of UN efforts to meet world challenges, calling it the "most effective way to ensure our collective peace and security, protect human rights and uphold the rule of law".
World leaders, including US president George Bush and Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will address the general assembly on political, social and economic issues next week.
Much of the year-long session's activity will be conducted away from the spotlight, however, as the assembly struggles to agree an ambitious programme of reform launched by Mr Annan.
Although diplomats say that the atmosphere has improved in recent months, little progress has been made on key parts of the reform package, including a proposal to expand the membership of the Security Council.
The general assembly last week approved a new counter-terrorism strategy which promises to improve co-operation in fighting terrorism but does not define terrorism itself or deal with states which commit terrorist acts.
Ireland's permanent representative to the UN, David Cooney, is co-chairing a committee tasked with reviewing the thousands of mandates adopted by the general assembly over the past 60 years. Some mandates, which deal with everything from disarmament to human rights, are overlapping and employ parallel staffs working towards almost identical goals.
Some developing countries, which account for a large majority in the general assembly, are suspicious of mandate reform, fearing that it could be used by richer countries to cut programmes in order to reduce costs.
The review is due to be completed by the end of this year but UN officials agree that the scale of the task means that it will take many months longer.
Mr Annan's term as secretary-general expires at the end of this year and the general assembly will choose a successor on the basis of a nomination from the Security Council.
