Interview: UN General Assembly president pledges to push for early implementation of new UN development agenda

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) can push for an early implementation of the sustainable development agenda within the following year, said Mogens Lykketoft, president of the 70th session of UNGA.

On Sept. 25, 193 UN member states adopted here the ambitious agenda which comprises of 17 sustainable development goals, serving as the launch pad for actions by the international community as well as national governments to promote shared prosperity and well-being for all over the next 15 years.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Lykketoft said on that agenda, the UNGA can do much to keep civil society as well as business community worldwide on board, meanwhile urging member states to create framework for economic activities to make the agenda "obvious."

"So here we can do some work in promoting the whole agenda and pushing for early implementation," he noted.

Lykketoft said with promoting the agenda, "we are in particular promoting the interest of developing countries to get better access to the resources of this world, (and) to get better access to influence over economic development."

"So that's what the agenda is all about, really, that we have to use our limited resources in a cleverer and more equal way," he added.

Lykketoft, Denmark's former parliament speaker, started his year-long UNGA presidency in September.

Fully aware of the "short window of opportunity" to make changes in the world in his position, Lykketoft expressed his hope that the UNGA can contribute to addressing a wide range of issues, including poverty, climate change, refugee humanitarian crisis, by "integrating all the good ideas."

By illustrating that food rations for Syrian refugees were cut down to half due to lack of money, he said "we also should work as good we can in order to provide a much more unified and robust UN system of financing these operations."

"We have to urge rich nations in this organization to come forward and to contribute much more continuously and much more unified to all these operations," he added.

The UNGA is the main deliberative organ of the world body, providing a unique forum for multi-lateral discussion on the full spectrum of international issues.

The 70th session of the UNGA concluded its annual high-level debate here on Saturday, putting an official end to a series of high-level meetings on sustainable development, women empowerment, south-south cooperation, and counter-terrorism at UN headquarters in New York.

CHINA'S STRONGER PRESENCE IN GLOBAL ARENA

During those high-level meetings, China has pledged to provide 2 billion U.S. dollars to support South-South cooperation, and will also do its best to raise its investment in the least developed countries to 12 billion dollars by 2030.

To list a few, China has also pledged to set up a permanent peacekeeping police squad and will build a peacekeeping standby force of 8,000 troops to back the UN peacekeeping operations.

In addition, China will provide a total of 100 million U.S. dollars of free military aid for the African Union to support the establishment of the African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis.

"I think President Xi Jinping with exactly those initiatives we were talking about and announced here during his visit in the U.S. has given the global development agenda a huge kick forward," said Lykketoft, adding that China's commitments for climate change, South-South cooperation and peacekeeping operations are "very important."

"So this is an expression of China being much more present on the global arena than some decades ago," he said.

Lykketoft, who is expecting his 15th visit to China at the end of this month since 1978, said he has witnessed China's performance of economic growth, and China has contributed a lot to the reduction of extreme poverty in the world.

"And I think that of course China has a lot to contribute to the developing countries because it has been one of the most successfully performing developing countries back from the end of the 70s," he said.

"We are all looking with great interest about where China will go economically and socially in reforms now embarked on in China," said Lykketoft, referring to a lower but more sustainable economic growth in the country.

"So it's a big transformation you are embarking on now in China," he added, saying how this will play out in the coming years will be of great economic interest for the whole world. Endi