United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will meet with former Pres. Jimmy Carter and about 40 global health leaders this morning at the Carter Center to focus world attention on maternal health care.

Ban is making his first trip to Atlanta since he became Secretary General in 2007. The last time he visited the city was 15 years ago, as deputy chief of the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C.

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U.N. Secretary General visits Atlanta

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Ban called Atlanta "an engine of growth and dynamism" and plans to meet with Atlanta business leaders for lunch today at Coca-Cola. Big corporations are vital to the success of development goals worldwide, Ban said.

While touring Atlanta, and meeting with Gov. Sonny Perdue and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Ban has been flooded with phone calls from world leaders on various crises, including the cyclone in Myanmar and political problems in Zimbabwe.

"All these crises are coming at the same time," Ban told the editorial board of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He plans to talk with leaders of Myanmar to urge them to allow United Nations relief workers into the country to help the tens of thousands of victims of the cyclone who are without water, food and electricity.

The military government in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is holding up relief workers with diplomatic passports at the airport, Ban said. Needed supplies are not getting into the country.

He'll also urge military leaders there to postpone the country's referendum scheduled this week.

As if the cyclone weren't enough, during lunch with Gov. Perdue Thursday, Ban took a 20-minute call from the Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe concerning the political violence in that country. Ban said independent monitors must observe Zimbabwe's attempts to resolve its disputed presidential election to insure "a credible process," and he urged a cease in violence against opposition leaders there.

At the Carter Center, health leaders will discuss the United Nations Millennium Development Goals – eight goals to be reached worldwide by 2015 that include:

• reducing child and maternal mortality;

• eradicating extreme poverty and hunger;

• universal primary education;

• combatting AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Some of the basic goals may not be reached, especially as world food prices continue to soar, Ban said.

As for the other millennium goals, "We're not even half-way on maternal mortality," Ban told the Journal-Constitution. "It's the slowest moving goal."

The biggest area for concern is sub-Saharan Africa, Ban said. "No countries there are on board," he said.

The Millennium Goals are a blue print for development endorsed by 189 countries in 2000.