Secretary-General set to wrap up four-nation Asian visit

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is currently in China, will complete his four-nation trip tomorrow to Asia, which has also taken him to Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam.

Before departing Beijing, Mr. Ban will take part in a roundtable discussion organized by China’s Central Party School and is scheduled to return to New York tomorrow afternoon.

In a response to a journalist’s question, Martin Nesirky, the Secretary-General’s spokesperson, said that even though human rights did not come up during Mr. Ban’s meeting with President Hu Jintao yesterday, the subject was discussed in his meeting with other Chinese leaders.

The Secretary-General has consistently raised human rights issues with concerned Member States at an appropriate opportunity, Mr. Nesirky said.

Mr. Ban arrived in Beijing after visiting Shanghai and Nanjing. In Shanghai, he delivered the closing speech at the Shanghai Expo, where he praised the city’s reputation as one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities and said that the Expo helped highlight China’s innovations in a number of important fields.

In Nanjing, he received an honorary doctorate from one of the world’s oldest centres of learning and delivered a speech to students at the university.