From the office of Lesley Abdela, FYI -

Women Foreign Ministers Organize at UN Session

November 14, 2001
By REUTERS

Filed at 1:12 a.m. ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Some 16 women foreign ministers
appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to make sure
women in war zones get special treatment as victims and are
invited to be partners at the peace negotiating table.

In a letter circulated on Tuesday, the women said they were
''fully convinced that human development toward human
security can be achieved only in societies that grant and
protect the human rights of women.''

Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, one of
the organizers of the letter, said the foreign ministers
expected principles of equality to be applied to
Afghanistan, where women under Taliban rule have been
barred from most employment and almost all schools.

She told reporters that 85 percent of Afghan refugees were
women and children and needed to be involved in any
internationally sponsored reconstruction of the central
Asian nation.

The organizing of women foreign ministers at the annual
high-level U.N. General Assembly session was begun several
years ago by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright,
who flew to New York for a dinner earlier this week with
the ministers.

The foreign ministers signing the letter included: Arta
Dade of Albania, Janet Bostwick of the Bahamas, Billie
Antoinette Miller of Barbados, Maria Soledad Alvear
Valenzuela of Chile, Maria Eugenia Brizuela de Avila of El
Salvador, M'mah Hawa Bangoura of Guinea, Lydia Polfer of
Luxembourg, Llinka Mitreva of Macedonia, Lila
Ratsifandriamanana of Madagascar, Lilian Patel of Malawi,
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zumi of South Africa, Maria Levens of
Suriname, Anna Lindh of Sweden, Aichatou Mindaoudou of
Niger and Antonieta Rosa Gomes of Guinea-Bissau.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company