UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon began his first overseas visit by meeting with European Union leaders, including foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso earlier on Wednesday.

Speaking after an informal meeting in Brussels with NATO's governing body, the North Atlantic Council, Ban said he appreciated NATO's contribution to peace and security around the world, which was performed in coordination with and under the mandate of the UN.

The two bodies need to cooperate to achieve their "common objectives," -- peace and security, prosperity, and protection of human rights around the world, he said.

"We are committed to working closely together in the future," said Ban.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer agreed, saying the two sides should enhance their relationship, as NATO has been increasingly operating under a UN umbrella or with the UN's blessing, such as in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Darfur.

The military alliance will continue to play its role in these regions, a role in which it needs UN support, he said.

Kosovo, a legal province of Serbia, has been administered by the UN since the NATO bombing campaign in 1999. NATO has more than 16,000 troops in Kosovo, the so-called KFOR, which preserve peace and security there.

Brussels is the first leg of Ban's seven-nation visit, which is also to bring him to France and Ethiopia to attend key international meetings.

Ban will leave for Paris late Wednesday to attend Thursday's conference on Lebanon's reconstruction, which will be hosted by French President Jacques Chirac and attended by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Next week Ban will travel to Ethiopia for an African Union summit on Darfur and Somalia, where he is expected to press for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force to aid the 7,000-member African Union force. The AU force has so far failed to halt ceasefire violations in Sudan's Darfur region.

He will end his Africa visit with a stop in Nairobi, where he is set to meet with the Kenyan president and the staff of the UN headquarters on the continent.

From Kenya, the secretary-general travels to the Netherlands, where he will visit the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague.

From The Hague, he flies to Washington, DC for a meeting of the Middle East Quartet, scheduled on Feb. 2.

(Xinhua News Agency January 25, 2007)