New York, NY (BBN)– Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will hold on Tuesday his first live “global conversation” with members of the public through social media networks, answering questions on a range of pressing United Nations issues.

Ahead of the annual General Debate of the UN General Assembly, which begins next week, Mr. Ban will take questions for an hour tomorrow starting at 11 a.m. local time in New York.

More than 5,500 questions across the six official UN languages – as well as Portuguese and Swahili – have already been submitted by people around the world, and a selection of those will be chosen and then posed to Mr. Ban by the event’s moderator, Juju Chang of ABC News in the United States.

The event will be streamed live on Facebook, Livestream, Tumblr and UN Webcast, while Twitter and Weibo have also been used to submit questions, a UN statement said.

BBN/SSR/AD-13Sept11-1:12 pm (BST)