The president of the Spanish government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, will travel to the USA today to take part in the United Nations General Assembly and the G-20 summit, where he will petition for more decisive steps to be taken in face of climate change and for the building of a new international financial order.

Although he will coincide with the American president, Barack Obama, both at the UN and G-20 meetings, the long-waited official meeting between the two will not take place until October 13th in the White House.

Zapatero's first destination will be UN headquarters in New York, where he will take part in Tuesday's High Level Meeting on climate change, followed on Wednesday and Thursday by the opening of the 64th session of the General Assembly.

According to government sources, Spain has been invited to take part in the conference on climate change in its role as one of the leading countries in the field of renewable energies and for its important contribution towards helping developing countries lower their emissions.

According to Alicia Montavlo, director general of the Office of Climate Change, the UN meeting is an important forerunner of the climate summit in Copenhagen in December, where it will be "imperative that concrete agreements are reached to combat the environmental crisis facing us", although she also recognised the difficulty in getting the US, or countries like India, China and Brazil, to sign a global agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gases

In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Zapatero will underline his commitment to combatting climate change and defend his belief in multilateral solutions to the global recession.
 
On Thursday afternoon, Zapatero will move on to Pittsburgh to address the International Trade Union Confederation, before coming back to New York to take part in the plenary sessions of the next G-20 summit, which will concentrate on economic recovery and a reform of the international financial system.

Zapatero will insist on the need to implement recession exit strategies, but will also reiterate the need to maintain the support systems currently in place until there are more definite signs of recovery.  He will announce his willingness for Spain to increase its support of the IMF, as part of a coordinated EU commitment to the fund, but without forgetting the essential objective of moving towards a "green economy".