'All of us will be deciding what new commitments we need to make to ensure that 2006 goes down in history as the moment when the world set about turning the tide of this pandemic once and for all,' said UN General Assembly President Jan Eliasson.

In his opening remarks, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said the gathering is "no ordinary meeting" and all 191 UN member states will take this opportunity to review their collective response to AIDS since the assembly's 2001 special session on the epidemic.

New Commitments

The 2001 special event, the first of its kind, adopted a landmark declaration which laid out a series of time-bound targets, including a substantial reduction of the AIDS prevalence rates among young people.

"All of us will be deciding what new commitments we need to make to ensure that 2006 goes down in history as the moment when the world set about turning the tide of this pandemic once and for all," Eliasson noted.

The Swedish foreign minister urged all participants to work together as partners for the most concrete and powerful outcome possible from the meeting.

"We need a response commensurate to the threat we face. We know what needs to be done, and we have the tools to do it," he said. " This week, we must make the necessary commitments to strengthen and deliver the response we promised."

Most Catastrophic Disease

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who took the floor after Eliasson, noted that over the last 25 years, AIDS has spread further, faster and with more catastrophic long-term effects than any other disease.

"We must apply the main lesson of the past 25 years: namely, that it is only when we work together with determination and unity of purpose that we can win against the disease," he said.

He added that such efforts require visionary leadership and unprecedented partnership, among governments, the private sector and civil society.

Annan expected that this meeting will chart the way forward, saying that "it must set us firmly on course towards getting us as close as possible to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010 -- the goal that you committed yourselves to at the World Summit last September."

"It must move us decisively towards our destination -- the Millennium Development Goal of halting, and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS among women, men and children by 2015," he concluded.