Security to be tight as UN Secretary-General speaks in Calgary Friday

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CALGARY — Security is expected to be tight when the secretary general of the United Nations speaks in Calgary Friday night.

Ban Ki-moon is expected to meet with Alberta government officials in the afternoon before speaking to about 350 students at the University of Calgary in the evening.

“I think we got a call about three-and-a-half weeks ago. We found out he was coming through. We worked very closely with our provincial government and they eventually selected us for the spot that he would come to speak,” said Dru Marshall, provost and vice-president academic, at the University of Calgary.

“We’re very excited. We jumped at the chance to host him.”

Marshall said the subject of the speech is “A call to youth: the UN in Canada in a changing world.” It also happens to tie in with International Youth Day.

“We had three topics for him and of course one of them was youth leadership. He jumped at that because it is International Youth Day and that sort of set the stage for other things that we’re doing,” she said.

“It’s an invited talk. He wanted the invitation list to be limited to the university community and so we really focused in on students.”

Marshall said there was no difficulty finding enough students to attend the talk. The secretary general, who is from South Korea, has headed up the UN since 2007 and will be stepping down after this year.

Marshall said there will be no shortage of security on hand for the event which will include a brief talk by the international world leader, as well as a question and answer session with students.

“There’s huge security considerations around this and I think that’s why they’ve asked us to keep close control of the venue,” said Marshall.

“I think this will be a highly secure event.”

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Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press

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