President to address NAM summit and UNGA next month

President Maithripala Sirisena will be packing his bags next month to fly to two major talk-fests: The Non-Aligned (NAM) Summit in Caracas, Venezuela and the annual United Nations General Assembly sessions in New York.

After participating in the 17th NAM summit on September 17 and 18, he will be heading to the UN where on September 21 he is sched- uled to address the 71st session of the General Assembly.

This year's Assembly has triple significance: The UN and the US are hosting backto-back summit meetings on "Refugees and Migrants" September 19-20. The US summit is being hosted by President Barack Obama, who will make his last address to the UN Assembly, as his term in the White House ends in January.

A third key event will include farewell tributes to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who relinquishes his office after a 10-year tenure. The current speculation is that Mr. Ban, a former Foreign Minister of South Korea, is planning to run for President when he returns to Seoul in January 2017.

The NAM summit was originally scheduled for July in Venezuela but was postponed, mainly due to a political and economic crisis fuelled by a growing shortage of food followed by unruly demonstrations in the streets of Caracas. Last week, the Time magazine quoted a 69-year-old Caracas resident as saying: "We are now living on (President) Maduro's diet: No Food, No Nothing."

When President Sirisena was at the UN last year, he attended a much-publicised UN luncheon for world leaders. The menu, it later transpired, was recycled food saved from garbage (as part of the UN's policy that no food should go to waste when more than 800 million people worldwide are living in extreme hunger).