UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon started his first day on the job today by promising immediate attention to the crisis in Darfur but backing off traditional UN opposition to capital punishment.
Mr Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, who succeeds Kofi Annan, was greeted by a UN honor guard and then went to a UN meditation chapel to honor fallen peacekeepers.
Asked about the weekend execution of Saddam Hussein, Mr Ban (62), told reporters the former Iraqi leader was responsible "for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against the Iraqi people and we should never forget the victims of these crimes".
But he said the issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide in conformity with international law. South Korea has the death penalty although it is considering abolishing it.
However, Mr Ban's special representative in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, released a statement saying that the world body "remains opposed to capital punishment, even in the case of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide".
Mr Ban said the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region was "very high on my agenda" and he would meet with his special envoy Jan Eliasson of Sweden tomorrow morning and had already spoken by telephone with him.
He also announced he would attend an African Union summit at the end of January in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and talk to Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir there.
"By engaging myself in the diplomatic process I hope that we will be able to resolve peacefully as soon as possible on these serious issues," Ban said.
The United Nations is seeking to get a peacekeeping force in Sudan's western arid Darfur region, where violence has escalated, rapes have multiplied and more than 2.5 million people have lost their homes. Bashir has put conditions on a UN peacekeeping force to bolster the under-financed 7,000 African Union troops, now in Darfur.
On North Korea, Mr Ban said it was a priority on his agenda, especially since he had been deeply involved in diplomacy on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions as South Korea's foreign minister.
Meanwhile, Russia today assumed the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, the world body's most powerful organ, which has five new elected members.
The 15-nation council has five permanent members with veto power - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - and 10 elected nations, who rotate for two-year terms, five each year.
South Africa, Indonesia, Italy, Belgium and Panama took their seats as non-permanent members, replacing Argentina, Tanzania, Japan, Denmark and Greece. Panama was the compromise candidate for Latin America after a protracted battle between Venezuela and Guatemala last year.
Remaining for another year on the council, whose decisions on peace and security are mandatory for all UN members, are Congo Republic, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia.