SG: Thank you very much Mr. Prime Minister and I would want to thank you for your very warm welcome. And I am also very happy to be here in Japan and I have come, as you indicated, at a very crucial time.

I was very happy to have had the opportunity, Mr. Prime Minister, to brief you on Iraq and the fact-finding mission that I sent to Iraq led by Mr. Brahimi who is here with us tonight.

And I indicated to the Prime Minister I shall be releasing the report in New York [tomorrow] Monday and I gave him an idea of some of the recommendations in that report. And we both agreed that the electoral issue is extremely important and we need to find a way of moving forward. We need to find a mechanism. We're working, of course, with the Iraqis, helping the Iraqis determine a mechanism for establishing an interim or transitional government so that the transfer of power, which is anticipated on the 30th of June, will go ahead. We'll work with them to organize elections in the not too distant future, but of course the report does give details.

We also talked about the role of the United Nations and the importance of the United Nations going back to Iraq and I assured the Prime Minister that the UN has always been ready to play its role and shared with him the plans we have for doing that on condition that security would not be an impediment because it is an essential condition for the work of the UN for average Iraqi people and also for all the things that we want to do in Iraq.

So the UN is ready to play its role as the (Security) Council indicated once the circumstances are right. We are preparing ourselves to play that role. And I look forward to talking to the Prime Minister on a host of other issues which he had mentioned to you. And let me conclude by thanking the Prime Minister for the strong personal commitment to the United Nations and to multilateralism in general. And I am very happy that I am making this visit here in Japan today to make our relationship even closer between the UN and the Government of Japan, and the people of Japan.

Thank you.