DHAKA: The United Nations General Assembly opened its annual session with its gaze firmly fixed on the decades ahead as its new President outlined the need to lay the groundwork for global sustainable development in the years following the end of the current development cycle in 2015.

The Assembly will deal with a record 175-item agenda that includes the Syrian crisis.

 The UN secretary general Ban-ki-moon inaugurated the 68th session of United National at the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday afternoon.

“We will intensify our efforts to define a post-2015 development agenda, including with a single set of goals for sustainable development that we hope will address the complex challenges of this new era and capture the imagination of the people of the world, as the MDGs did”, the secretary-general told the 193-member body, adding that attention would also be focused on speeding achievement of the MDG in the 1,000 days to the deadline

"The upcoming year will be pivotal for this assembly as we seek to identify the parameters of the post-2015 development agenda," reported Xinhua citing John William Ashe, president of the 68th UNGA session, in his opening remarks.

"The magnitude of the task before us will require decisive action and the highest levels of collaboration, and we must prove ourselves and our efforts to be equal to the enormity of the task," he said.

The UN is in the last 1,000 days of action toward its anti- poverty targets that are required to be accomplished by the year of 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were agreed by world leaders at a UN summit in 2000.

BDST: 1203 HRS, SEP 19, 2013
RS/BSk