BRUSSELLS, Belgium, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon started his first overseas trip since taking office by holding meetings with European Union leaders in Brussels.
At the top of his agenda were crises ranging from the Balkans and Sudan's restive Darfur region, to Somalia, climate change and human rights.
"The European Union and the United Nations have maintained a very strong partnership and I regard the EU's contribution as vitally important for the work of the United Nations," Ban told reporters after meeting with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
"Our positions are on the same page," he noted after an earlier meeting with EU High Representative Javier Solana.
Following a session with NATO Secretary-General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, Ban said he was "very much assured and encouraged" by its contribution to peace and security in Afghanistan and Kosovo with close coordination and under the mandate of the United Nations.
"We discussed ... how to increase overall cooperation at the organizational level," he said.
Asked about an initiative by Italy, a non-permanent U.N. Security Council member, to seek a moratorium on the death penalty, the secretary-general said there was a growing tendency to see some phasing out of the death penalty, "and I encourage that trend."
Ban, who took office Jan. 1, is to attend a donors' conference Thursday in Paris, which will seek to help Lebanon recover from the ravages of last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah, calling it "one of the most important, serious areas to which the international community needs to pay attention and cooperate."
He also pointed to the need to help Iraq restore political, social and economic stability.
From Paris Ban will travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then on to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for an African Union summit on Darfur.
