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Pres ident Thabo Mbeki will lead a team to a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on September 20, the foreign affairs department said yesterday.

Several meetings and discussions being held in the run-up to that summit would serve to consolidate positions on issues like multilateralism and tensions in the Middle East, director-general Ayanda Ntsaluba told reporters in Pretoria.

The first was a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (Nam) in Durban on August 19, hosted by South Africa with the theme "multilateralism for the 21st century". On the 18th, a special committee dealing with Palestine would be meeting on the fringes of the Nam gathering.

Ntsaluba said Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad would lead a team to the Middle East towards the end of the month – visiting Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Egypt.

"We anticipate that there will be fairly robust reflection in the course of the General Assembly in New York in September on issues of the Middle East and quite clearly these consultations are necessary to ensure that our positions that we take to New York are as informed as possible."

On August 25 and 26, Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will host her United Kingdom counterpart, Jack Straw, for a meeting of a bi-national forum between their two countries. These talks were also expected to "focus on anticipating the (UN) agenda, particularly the issues around multi-lateralism".

On the General Assembly meeting itself, Ntsaluba said reform of the UN was expected to be high on the agenda.

"Which is partly why we decided as South Africa to make the theme of the Nam ministerial meeting focus on issues of multilateralism".

Ntsaluba said Mbeki was also expected to attend a summit on employment and poverty reduction in Burkina Faso in September. – Sapa.

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