The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, United Nations

World leaders open their annual UN debate here Tuesday, with top geopolitical issues like the crisis in Georgia, Iran's nuclear ambitions and rights abuses in Darfur overshadowed by the global financial crisis.

More than 120 heads of state or government are attending the week-long General Assembly's general debate, which UN chief Ban Ki-moon is to open at 9 a.m. (1300 GMT). Britain's UN Ambassador John Sawers on Monday told reporters that the financial crisis would be "uppermost on the minds" of world leaders who "will want to address that issue as well as issues on the UN agenda."

Indeed George W. Bush, who will address the Assembly for the last time as US president Tuesday, is expected to "talk some about the recent action he took to help stabilize our markets and the global impact of that," his spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Monday. The US president has been pushing the US Congress to approve his proposed 700- billion-dollar bailout, but his Democratic critics and even some fellow Republicans have criticized the plan.

Bush is also expected to urge Russia to honor its commitment to fully withdraw its troops from Georgia and, according to Johndroe, "will talk about the role of multilateral institutions, the need for them to be effective in combating terrorism, but also help spread freedom." Another keynote speaker Tuesday will be French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency and who brokered the truce deal which ended the five-day war in August between Russia and Georgia for control of the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

In the afternoon, it will be Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's turn to take the floor.

It will be Ahmadinejad's fourth visit to the United States for the UN General Assembly since his election in 2005. He is also due to meet students, religious leaders and foreign politicians. The firebrand Iranian leader has used previous UN visits to attack Iran's arch-foes, the United States and Israel, and to defend Tehran's nuclear program which the West fears could be used for weapons development.

Thursday, foreign ministers of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States are to meet on the sidelines of the Assembly debate to weigh prospects for a fourth round of UN sanctions against Iran for its nuclear defiance.