United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will attend a donors' conference for the rebuilding of Gaza that is set to take place in Egypt early next month. Ban will travel to the seaside resort of Sharm El Sheikh for the conference, hosted by Egypt and Norway, on the final leg of an African trip that will take him to South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also slated to attend the pledging conference aimed at raising funds to rebuild Gaza after Israel's 22-day offensive, which ended more than a month ago, and resulted in damage and destruction to 14,000 homes, dozens of factories as well as major infrastructure damage. Clinton announced her participation on Thursday during a visit to Indonesia. The Egyptian foreign ministry also announced on Thursday that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian President Silvio Berlusconi will attend the conference. During his trip to Africa, Ban will meet with Nelson Mandela in South Africa before traveling to Tanzania to officially open a U.N. office in Zanzibar. From there he will visit the city of Goma in eastern DRC where he will meet U.N. peacekeepers. The U.N. has some 17,000 peacekeepers in the DRC, the largest of its 18 peacekeeping missions worldwide.
