Bangladeshi FM Khalilur Rahman elected president of 81st UNGA session

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Bangladeshi FM Khalilur Rahman elected president of 81st UNGA session

2026-06-03 11:08 Last Updated At：16:27

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman was elected president of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday.

With 190 UN member states present and voting, Rahman received 99 votes, against 91 votes for Andreas S. Kakouris, special envoy of Cyprus's foreign minister for multilateralism.

Rahman, who was sworn in as Bangladeshi foreign minister in February 2026, will take office when the 81st UNGA session convenes in September this year for a one-year term.

Noting that the United Nations is being tested on multiple fronts, with conflicts and wars continuing to inflict "untold sufferings" and the world body under increasing pressure and facing financial stress, Rahman said these challenges "tend to undermine the public trust and confidence and the ability of our organization to deliver its promises."

He promised to address these challenges along six pillars of action: peace and security, the 2030 agenda, climate change, human rights, emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, and UN reform.

"As your president, I will dedicate myself to rebuilding trust, nurturing consensus, and opening space for good faith negotiations that will lead to outcomes for all that are owned by all," Rahman said. Born in 1954, Rahman joined the diplomatic service of Bangladesh in 1979, and in 1999, he joined the UN Secretariat as special adviser at the UN Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva. During the ensuing 25 years at the United Nations, he held senior positions in the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and was a lead author of and substantive contributor to major UN flagship publications.

DPP's attempt to smear 'one country, two systems' doomed to fail: spokeswoman

Any attempt by Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities to smear the "one country, two systems" principle is doomed to fail, Zhu Fenglian, spokeswoman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said at a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

She made the remarks in response to a media query about the recent remarks made by Shen Yu-chung, a Taiwan official, on the "one country, two systems" principle.

"Taiwan is China's Taiwan, and the future of Taiwan can only and must be decided by the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people, including Taiwan compatriots. Peaceful reunification and 'one country, two systems' represent the best way to realize national reunification and best serve the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation, including compatriots in Taiwan. The DPP authorities, driven by their separatist agenda, have gone out of their way to reject peaceful reunification and smear 'one country, two systems' in an attempt to mislead public opinion and fool the people in Taiwan. Such attempts will not succeed. It must be emphasized that differences in systems are not an obstacle to reunification, still less an excuse for separatism. A growing number of insightful people in Taiwan have refused to be coerced or deceived by the DPP authorities and are supporting peaceful reunification across the Taiwan Strait," said Zhu.