U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (C) speaks flanked by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (L), and U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe (R) at a meeting about international support for Iraq at United Nations headquarters in New York September 22, 2007. [Photo: Reuters]

Related: Rice Meets Iraqi PM

               UN Kicks off High-level Talks on Iraq

United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki began Saturday afternoon a high-level meeting over Iraq issues at the UN Headquarters in New York.

The meeting was designed to focus on major challenges facing Iraq and how the United Nations and the international community can better assist the country's people and Government, said UN officials close to the meeting.

Permanent members of the UN Security Council, Iraq's neighboring countries, members of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations, and representatives of concerned regional and international organizations attended the meeting.

The participants are discussing how to carry out Security Council resolution 1770, which was adopted last month and extended for one more year the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI).

In addition, to promote regional dialogue and cooperation as well as Iraq's massive humanitarian, reconstruction and development needs, and to implement the International Compact with Iraq, a five-year plan for peace and development are also on the agenda of the meeting.

The UNAMI, established in 2003, is led by the newly appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, who succeeded Ashraf Jehangir, now the senior UN envoy to Sudan.

Jehangir's predecessor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was among 22 UN staff members killed by a suicide bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, 2003.