The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit Mexico next week to attend an international conference on disarmament, UN coordinator in Mexico said Thursday.
Ban will meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon to discuss such issues as disarmament, climate change and the Millennium Development Goals, Magdy Martinez-Soliman, UN coordinator in Mexico told a press conference.
It's Ban's second visit to Mexico, he said.
More than 1,000 representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world are expected to attend the annual meeting scheduled for Sept. 9-11 to discuss how to contribute to disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and to reducing conventional arms while advancing peace and development.
The meeting is aimed at a treaty to fight the international trade in illegal small arms.
The Americas has already had such a treaty, which was ratified by most members except the United States.
"Mexico has always been an leading nation in the disarmament field, and this meeting is in part a tribute to that," said Maria Luisa Chavez, chief of NGO Relations.
She referred to Mexico's diplomatic push to create the first regional nuclear free zone treaty, known as the Treaty of Tlaltelolco, signed in 1967 at a regional meeting of Latin American countries.
Since then four other regions have declared themselves free of nuclear weapons, namely South Pacific in 1985, Southeast Asia in 1995, Africa in 1996 and Central Asia in 2006.
In a marked change to his predecessor George W. Bush administration, U.S. President Barack Obama has been actively contributing to the disarmament cause, said Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo, deputy foreign minister for multilateral affairs in Mexico's foreign ministry.
"Obama has called a UN Security Council meeting that will do new work on a treaty on fissionable materials, something that had been stalled since the early 1990s," Gomez said.
One the sidelines of the conference, the UN chief will also meet with Mexico's foreign minister, and ministers of health, social development, environment and education.