Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann said the summit will ensure that all nations — not just the 20 major economic powers — "have an opportunity to participate equally and fully in the common search for solutions that meet the concerns and needs of all countries, large and small."
The summit at U.N. headquarters in New York from June 1-3 also will focus on reforming and strengthening the international financial and economic system.
At last week's G-20 meeting in London, the world's leading industrial and developing economic powers promised $1.1 trillion for lending to less well-off countries. They promised major efforts to clean up banks' tattered balance sheets and get credit flowing again, to shut down global tax havens and to tighten regulation over hedge funds and other financial high-flyers in the U.S. and elsewhere.
D'Escoto, a Roman Catholic priest from Nicaragua with openly leftist views, stressed the importance of including all countries in the search for solutions to the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression.