The Secretary-General and his party flew from Kathmandu to Dhaka in the late afternoon today to begin a two-day visit to Bangladesh. Journalists waiting for him at the airport asked him about the destruction in Afghanistan of the Buddha statues. He replied that he thought it was "outrageous" and added that " there is no way that anyone can accept or condone what happened".

Before turning in for the night, the Secretary-General had a short meeting with all the UN Heads-of-Agencies in Bangladesh. He was briefed about a few key initiatives being spearheaded by the UN agencies in the country, particularly in the field of girls' education and maternal mortality reduction. He was also informed that the UN system's "Common Country Assessment" for Bangladesh had recently been issued in the form of a two-volume publication, and that it analyzed the socio-economic realities of Bangladesh today from a "rights-based" perspective : the rights of survival, livelihood, protection and participation. The Secretary-General expressed his appreciation for the strong presence of the UN system's development activities in the country and urged the Heads-of-Agencies to focus on capacity-building both within the government and within civil society. "No government can do it alone -- we need all hands on deck". Afterwards his short meeting with the agency heads, the Secretary-General met with a gathering of more than 450 UN staff in the Grand Ballroom of the hotel. He encouraged them to continue their good work for the organisation and to support all ongoing efforts to reform and modernize the United Nations so as to make it an effective tool for poverty reduction in the years to come.

His official programme in Bangladesh begins tomorrow.