In Cairo, Ban urges parties to Gaza conflict to end "cycle of building and destroying"

UN, 12 October 2014 – On the next stop of his tour of North Africa, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Egypt today at a conference on the reconstruction of Gaza urged all parties to last summer's war to address the root causes of the protracted conflict to prevent the “cycle of building and destroying” from becoming a ritual. “We are here to stand with the people of Gaza who have endured a terrible summer of suffering,” said Mr. Ban in his remarks to the Cairo Conference on Gaza attended by the President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, and several foreign ministers including of Egypt, and Norway.

Azeri, Armenian Presidents Discuss Nagorno-Karabakh Dispute. -First meeting in two years.

VIENNA, November 19 (RIA Novosti) – The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia met Tuesday in Vienna in an attempt to resolve a decades-old territorial conflict, an Armenian diplomat said.

Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan met in Vienna’s Palais Coburg hotel for about two hours to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, the diplomat said.

The negotiations, mediated by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, marked the first time the presidents have met in two years.