Representatives from all 192 UN member states are due to discuss once more the stressing issue of climate change, as the 62nd session of the General Assembly opened Tuesday.

In his opening speech, the assembly’s president Srgjan Kerim said several changes have to be made so that the United Nations can become stronger and capable of rising “to the challenges of the 21st century.”

“More than ever before, global challenges demand multilateral solutions,” Macedonia’s former foreign minister said at UN Headquarters in New York.

“The UN is the appropriate multilateral forum to take action. That is why the revitalization of this General Assembly deserves our highest attention”

According to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the session’s main theme will be “Responding to Climate Change” after this topic has been discussed in numerous occasions over the past years by state leaders.

“I will make sure that the meetings on this issue, and many others, are real working sessions dealing with hard facts and hard decisions,” the South Korean diplomat said.

Climate change will be thoroughly discussed over the next days by more than 80 nation leaders and numerous foreign ministers attending the conference, which will represent the starting point for several debates on global warming and other subjects related to the environment.

Kerim said these preliminary debates are the basis of future measures that would tackle environmental issues. His statement was anchored by Ban, who said the session began Tuesday will definitely be the “most intense period of multilateral diplomacy ever in the United Nations history.”

“As we move well into the 21st century, the UN is, once again, the global forum where issues are discussed and solutions are hammered out,” Ban said.

Government leaders from most member states will reveal their point of view during meetings scheduled to take place this weekend and next week.

Aside from climate change, the diplomats are expected to discuss the situations in Sudan, Afghanistan and the Middle East in special sessions due to take place Friday through Sunday.

In the last day of these special sessions, the Quartet on the Middle East (the UN, the European Union, Russia and the United States) will hold a meeting that would review the progress made in discussions aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.