"Outlining his major priorities for 2006, his last year as United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan said today that alongside efforts to promote peace and security and combat poverty and disease he was determined to follow through on his wide-ranging agenda of reform and renewal of the world body.

"If there's one thing I would like to hand over to my successor when I leave office next year, is that it should be a UN that is fit for the many varied tasks and challenges we are asked to take on today," Mr. Annan told an end-of-year press conference at UN Headquarters in New York, stressing that a strong programme to do that was already embraced by Member States at the 2005 World Summit." [Read more]