National
Zapatero calls for moratorium on the death penalty at the United Nations
By h.b.
Sep 26, 2008 - 8:30 AM

Speaking to the United Nations in New York yesterday, the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has called for a universal moratorium on the death penalty in 2015 as a first step towards its complete abolition.

This was Zapatero’s second statement to the United Nations, the first was in 2004, and he spent most of his time urging the international community to comply with the Millennium Development Objectives, which has the target of reducing extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

Zapatero also told the chamber that it was urgent to construct a ‘new world financial order’ and defended the use of public spending to rationalise the markets.

He called for sustainable development and permanent political dialogue in the future and not ‘new cold wars’.