U.N. General Assembly ends

Saturday, October 4, 2003

NEW YORK, New York: The fifty-eighth General Assembly of the United Nations wound up its annual high-level debate late yesterday with St. Lucian-born Assembly President, Mr. Julian Hunte, saying it is vital that the United Nations focus on such issues as poverty, HIV/AIDS, global economic equity and environmental protection.

Summing up the debate, General Assembly President Hunte of the said what he had heard in recent days was a "reaffirmation of the United Nations as a primary international organization to address critical global problems." 

On Wednesday, Belize's foreign minister, Mr. Godfrey Smith, said "Such action must, of course, be agreed collective action, not unilateral action.

"I ask you: Is there any part of that we don't understand?" Smith said.

Louis Straker, deputy prime minister of the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, whose economy relies on the banana trade, asked, "How can the developed world that continues to subsidize its farmers, and touts globalization as the cure for all economic ills, continue defending the indefensible?" 

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