"Peace in the paramount United Nations Mission," Annan said in a statement in which he also urged leaders who attended last week's world summit here not to forget their pledge to battle global poverty and terrorism as well as to promote human rights.

"Let us pledge to do our utmost to carry out the important decisions on peace taken at last week's summit," he noted. "I hope the leaders who were here would go home and not forget the decisions we took, but set about energetically implementing then for the sake of peace and for the sake of their people."

Before attending a peace bell ringing ceremony, Annan met with UN messengers of peace Douglas, Nobel peace prize winner and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel and Jane Goodall, a renowned British researcher on the conservation of chimpanzees in Africa.

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