On April 16, 2008, Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Special Representative of President Hu Jintao, attended the open debate of the UN Security Council on the cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations at the UN headquarters in New York.

Addressing the Security Council, Wang said currently the world peace and development is facing many problems and challenges, whose settlement requires effective collective action at the international, regional and national level. Given this situation, strengthening cooperation between the UN and regional organizations is not only a need for promoting multilateralism, but is also an important development of international collective security mechanism.

Wang said the world peace and prosperity is inseparable from Africa's stability and development, calling on the international community to join hands with Africa. China supports the establishment of a more stable partnership between the UN and the African Union (AU), he said, urging both sides to strengthen coordination based on equality, mutual respect, complementarity and mutual benefits to give play to their respective advantages. The United Nations should carry out multi-faceted cooperation with the African Union in wide-ranging areas including the three pillars of security, development and human rights. "It should be pursued throughout the process of confidence building, conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peace building, and sustainable development," he said. Wang noted that China called for a high priority given to capacity building in pursuing UN-AU cooperation. "The UN and the international community should respond positively to the AU's legitimate requests, "he added.

Wang emphasized that China has been actively developing the new type of strategic partnership with Africa based on the principle of mutual respect, equality, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. The China-Africa cooperation is in the interest of China and all African countries as well as their peoples, he added. China will as always continue to offer assistance within its ability to AU and African countries and continue to support strengthening UN-AU partnership.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Wang Yi also met respectively with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Abdullahi Yussuf Ahmed, President of the Transitional Federal Government of the Somali Republic, and Mustafa Osman Ismail, Advisor of the President of Sudan.