(CNSNews.com) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is ill and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is in hiding, but this week’s high level meetings at the United Nations will still include some of the world’s leading despots, with both Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe heading for New York.

The General Assembly on Friday agreed to allow Libya’s transitional authorities to take the Libyan seat as the 66th session gets underway, overcoming resistance from a group of Latin American and sub-Saharan African countries. Venezuela and Cuba, leading the opposition, argued that Libya was being transformed into a NATO “protectorate.”

Two years ago, Gaddafi paid his one and only U.N. visit in four decades in power, delivering a rambling, 95-minute address during which he theatrically tore up a copy of the U.N. Charter and called on former colonial powers to pay more than $7 trillion in compensation to Africa.

Egypt and Tunisia will both have new faces at the U.N. podium this year; the men who represented them last year, foreign ministers Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Kamel Morjane, both lost their posts when popular uprisings toppled their governments early this year.

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s beleaguered regime is expected to be represented by Ambassador to the U.N. Bashar Ja’afari.

Assad himself has never attended the U.N. in New York. Foreign Minister Walid Muallem addressed last year’s session, but he is thought unlikely to visit this year, three weeks after the U.S. government imposed sanctions against him and accused him of abetting the regime’s “murder and torture of Syrian citizens.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that under U.S. host nation obligations, Muallem could attend if he wished to do so. The same applies to Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian president has attended the U.N. September session every year since taking office in 2005.  Last year he delivered his most controversial annual speech yet, charging that the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been orchestrated by U.S. government elements “to reverse the declining American economy” and “save the Zionist regime.”

Representatives of the U.S. and several dozen other countries walked out, although most delegations kept their seats and some applauded afterwards.

After this week’s meetings, Ahmadinejad will head to Caracas for talks with his close ally, Chavez, who is undergoing cancer treatment.

The Venezuelan leader said last week he was sending Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro to attend the U.N. session and would himself be watching closely from home. He predicted the gathering would be a “very active” one, citing the Palestinian recognition bid and debates about what he called Western “aggressions and genocide in Libya.”

Like Ahmadinejad, Chavez has used the U.N. podium to rail against the West and particularly the United States. When he addressed the General Assembly in 2006, one day after President Bush had spoken there, he called the American president “the devil” and said “it still smells of sulphur around here.”

Another leading dictator attending this year’s U.N. session is President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan, who met with Clinton during his 2009 visit and was in New York again last September.

Berdimuhamedov’s regime is on Freedom House’s 2011 list of the world’s nine worst human rights abusers, and he featured on Foreign Policy magazine’s 2010 list of the world’s 23 worst despots.

Counter-terrorism, racism – and ‘Palestine’

This year’s general debate – the session usually addressed by world leaders or senior government ministers – begins on Wednesday, with the theme “the role of mediation in the settlement of disputes by peaceful means.” President Obama is due to speak on Wednesday’s opening day.

In a speech scheduled for Friday, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas says he will make a formal appeal for full U.N. membership for the Palestinian entity. Western diplomats are trying to avoid a diplomatic showdown over the issue, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton holding talks at a New York hotel Sunday.

Around the plenary in the General Assembly chamber are a number of other meetings on various issues.

The week kicks off on Monday with a symposium on counter-terrorism cooperation hosted by U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, and a high-level meeting on prevention and control of non-communicable diseases – such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases – while meetings Tuesday will focus on desertification, nutrition and women’s and children’s health.

On Thursday, the U.N. will mark the tenth anniversary of the Durban Declaration, which charges Israel with racism, an event that Ahmadinejad is expected to attend.

The U.S. and at least a dozen other democracies (Australia, Austria, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands and New Zealand) are staying away because previous “Durban” events have singled out Israel for condemnation.

Also on Thursday there will be a high-level meeting on nuclear safety and security, prompted by the damage to Japanese nuclear plants after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

A conference on Friday will try to push ahead the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which can only enter into force when ratified by nine remaining countries – the U.S., China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.

On the sidelines of the U.N. gatherings, Clinton and her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu will on Thursday launch a new Global Counterterrorism Forum, an initiative of some 30 countries, one-third of which differ with the U.S. position over whether attacks by those under “occupation” constitute terrorism.