[In the News]:UN General Assembly


This is Steve Emberwith the VOA Special English program, IN THE NEWS.

The General Assembly of the United Nations will open itsfifty-sixth meeting on Tuesday. Representatives of theone-hundred-eighty-nine member countries will attend the yearlymeeting at U-N headquarters in New York City. The meeting will lastabout three months.Leaders of many countries will speak to theGeneral Assembly during the first weeks of the meeting. PresidentBush is to speak September Twenty-Fourth.

The United Nations was created after the terrible destruction ofWorld War Two. It was established by fifty-one countries in October,Nineteen-Forty-Five. The first United Nations General Assemblyopened in London in Nineteen-Forty-Six. Now, almost every nation inthe world belongs to the General Assembly.

A major goal of U-N is to help prevent and end wars. Manysituations of tension and fighting are on the list of issues to bediscussed during this year's General Assembly meeting. One is theconflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Others include thecauses of fighting in Africa and the situation in Afghanistan.Reports by the U-N international courts for war crimes in Rwanda andthe former Yugoslavia also will be discussed.

The General Assembly sets the budget for the U-N. Members willdiscuss how much money to provide for U-N peace-keepers and otherorganizations around the world.

For example, on Thursday the U-N refugee agency appealed forsecurity help for Macedonian and ethnic Albanian refugees. Bothgroups are afraid to return home after seven months of fighting inMacedonia. Observers say either the U-N or the European Union shouldsend a force to protect the refugees.

U-N peace keeping forces have been sent around the world. The U-Nhelped clear buried bombs in Mozambique. It trained police in Haiti.It supervised Nineteen-Eighty-Nine elections in Namibia.

Governments sometimes request other kinds of help. In Liberia,the U-N has opened a peace-building support office. In Cambodia, theU-N operates a human-rights office. In Guatemala the U-N is helpingto see that peace agreements are made effective.

Some U-N activities involve troops. Others involve issues. TheU-N Conference Against Racism met this week in Durban, South Africa.Delegates to this meeting on racial injustice struggled to reachagreement on some major issues. Arabs demanded that the anystatement call Israel a racially unjust state. Earlier in the week,Israel and the United States walked out of the conference. Theyrefused to accept that accusation.

Such disputes in U-N organizations and meetings are not unusual.Neither are criticisms of the world organization. Some people saythe U-N is weak. Yet others say the United Nations is extremelyimportant to world peace.

This VOA Special English program, In the News, was written byJerilyn Watson. This is Steve Ember.

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