CAIRO: The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will attend the upcoming Arab summit in Saudi Arabia and will also visit some countries in the Middle East on the same tour a United Nations Information Center (Unic) official stated. "The Secretary General announced within his first month in office that his priorities are the problems in Africa and the Middle East conflict, Maher Nassar, the head of Unic in Egypt said. "His participation in the Arab summit is a continuation of his intentions to address the troubles of the Middle East. Alvaro de Soto's, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, last week visited Cairo as part of the invigoration of the UN efforts in this regard. The UN envoy's visit to Cairo was the first of its kind and came amid re-intensification of the Quartet's - UN, EU, US and Russia - efforts to mediate a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The UN had earlier indicated it wanted to deal more closely with Arab partners in the peace process. "De Soto was in Cairo last week and he talked with The Daily Star Egypt and Al Ahram where he pointed out how often the Quartet had met recently in comparison with last year, Nassar said. De Soto was present at the swearing in of the new Palestinian Unity government but Nassar said "we are yet to see how the government will be implemented in reality. The Unic head was keen to point out that the UN was not only concerned with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but also the other conflicts in the region, mainly Iraq. "The UN is equally concerned with all the areas of dispute in the Middle East, Nassar said, "the start of the current process began in Madrid in 1991, there were multilateral negotiations between various countries on various issues. "The current stagnation in the peace process is something the UN is not happy with and hopes to change, he added. Another issue discussed at length in the briefing was the existence today of forms of slavery in the world, 200 years after the end of the transatlantic slave trade where 12 million Africans were sent to slavery in North and South America over a period of 400 years. "Slavery is one of the worst stigmas in the history of humanity, Nassar said. Pointing out that slavery exists in other forms to this very day; Nassar reeled off statistic after statistic highlighting the malaise. He cited a report which stated that there were 300,000 child soldiers in 30 areas of conflict. Some 700,000 children, mostly girls, have been transported across borders to become sex slaves. According to Nassar, there are 191 million children (ages 5-14) in the labor market, 40 percent of them in occupations of high risk. Nearly 5.7 million children are forced into labor to pay off family debts, and child trafficking has reached 1.2 million. Speaking at the inauguration of an exhibition commemorating the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in New York, Ki-Moon said "For all that has been accomplished in our campaign for human rights, we still have much to do.
