UN chief Ban Ki-moon marked the International Day of Peace here Friday by calling for a one-day ceasefire in all conflicts around the world. He also appealed to people around the world to observe a minute of silence at noon (1600 GMT) Friday.
"I call for a day of global ceasefire: a 24-hour respite from the fear and insecurity that plague so many places," he said at the annual ringing of the Peace Bell at UN headquarters. "I urge all countries and all combatants to honour a cessation of hostilities...I urge them to vigorously pursue ways to make this temporary ceasefire permanent," he added.
The annual Peace Bell ceremony coincided with the start of a flurry of intense diplomatic activity at UN headquarters before world leaders attend the annual General Assembly session next week. Ban is to host high-level meetings on Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East in the next few days.
The UN chief seized the occasion to pay tribute to Italian opera legend Luciano Pavarotti, a UN messenger of peace who died September 6 after a long battle with cancer of the pancreas. And Ban announced the appointments of four new UN messengers of peace, Princess Haya of Jordan, the daughter of the late King Hussein; renowned Argentinian-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim; best-selling Brazilian author Paulo Coelho and Japanese Midori Goto.
They join four other messengers of peace: Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma, US actor Michael Douglas, Nobel Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and British scientist Jane Goodall, renowned for her work on African primates. UN messengers of peace are leading figures in the fields of arts, music, literature or sports who are tasked with promoting the ideals of the United Nations around the world.