U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and 16 other diplomats and high-ranking officials on Monday rolled up their sleeves, donned hard hats and broke ground on the North Lawn to officially kick off the long awaited renovations of the international body's headquarters.

"Today we turn the soil which the United Nations stands on to mark the rebirth, or renovation, of our headquarters," Ban told the large audience which had gathered under the sunny spring skies.

The group dug into the fresh dirt with shiny shovels signaling the start of construction efforts set to get under way in the coming days to make way for a temporary conference and office building.

The building will be used as an alternate space for meetings that usually take place in the Conference and General Assembly buildings and will also accommodate Ban's office and his staff.

The North Lawn Conference space is set to be completed and ready for occupancy by mid-2009.

"With this groundbreaking ceremony, we open a new chapter a historic period of construction that will last five years," he added, emphasizing that efforts are being undertaken to make the facilities safer, more modern, greener and more efficient.

Beginning in December of this year, staff will begin moving out of the Secretariat Building. Some 2,600 employees are to be relocated to two other offices in Manhattan and about 350 others will be permanently moved to a location in Long Island City.

The remaining 1,400 are to remain on site but will work out of the basement and other safe areas.

Once empty the Secretariat building will be renovated beginning in early 2009 and is expected to be completed by early 2012.

By the following year all the other changes, including the refurbishing of the conference building, General Assembly, South Annex Building and the Dag Hammarskjold Library Building, are expected to be completed.

"It is long overdue and finally this project is launched so I hope that the promise will be met in five years," said Japan's Ambassador Yukio Takasu, adding that it was a complicated project that he hoped would stick to the timeline.

Source: Japan Economic Newswire