NEW YORK: In person and on screen, world leaders return to the United Nations foremost gathering for the first time in two years on Tuesday with a formidable, diplomacy-packed agenda of escalating crises to tackle, including the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic and a relentlessly warming planet.
Other pressing issues include rising US-China tensions, Afghanistan’s unsettled future under its new Taliban rulers and ongoing conflicts in Yemen, Syria and Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region.
Last year, no leaders came to the UN because the coronavirus was sweeping the globe, so all addresses were pre-recorded. This year, the General Assembly offered leaders a choice — come to New York or remain online. More than 100 decided to appear in person in the General Assembly hall.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres, who opens the weeklong event, “will pull no punches in expressing his concern about the state of the world, and he will lay out a vision to bridge the numerous divides that stand in the way of progress,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Guterres has already demonstrated that in pointed pre-meeting remarks about the virus and climate change.
By tradition, the first country to speak is Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, isn’t vaccinated. He reiterated last Thursday that he doesn’t plan to get the shot any time soon, justifying his refusal by saying he had COVID-19 and therefore has a high level of antibodies.
A key issue ahead of the meetings has been COVID-19 entry requirements for leaders to the United States — and to the UN headquarters itself. The US requires a vaccination or a recent COVID-19 test, and the UN will operate on an honor system whereby anyone entering the complex attests that they do not have symptoms and have not tested positive in the last 10 days.
The three most closely watched speakers on Tuesday morning are expected to be US President Joe Biden, appearing at the UN for the first time since his defeat of Donald Trump in the US election last November; Chinese President Xi Jinping, who in a surprise move will deliver a video address; and Iran’s recently elected hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi.
Ahead of the opening of the General Assembly’s annual General Debate, Guterres issued a dire warning that the world could be plunged into a new and probably more dangerous Cold War unless the United States and China repair their “totally dysfunctional” relationship.
The UN chief said in an interview this weekend with The Associated Press that Washington and Beijing should be cooperating on the climate crisis and negotiating on trade and technology, but “unfortunately, today we only have confrontation” including over human rights and geostrategic problems mainly in the South China Sea.
Speaking last week about Biden’s speech, Richard Gowan, UN director of the International Crisis Group, said “the really significant question is exactly how he frames relations with China.” He predicted that Biden “won’t be as forthright in criticism of China as Trump was, especially in 2019 and 2020,” but rather will “try and cast China as a country that is challenging the rules-based world order and a country that should not be trusted with leadership of the international system.”
On the latest speakers list released earlier this month, China’s speech was supposed to be delivered on Friday by a deputy prime minister. But the UN confirmed Monday that Xi will give the country’s video address instead. His speech and any comments about the US rivalry are certain to be closely watched and analyzed: China’s presence in the world, and its relationship with the United States, affect most every corner of the planet.
Other leaders scheduled to speak in person during the meeting, which ends Sept. 27, include King Abdullah II of Jordan, the president of Venezuela, and the prime ministers of Japan, India and the United Kingdom along with Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Leaders delivering prerecorded statements this year include the presidents of Egypt, Indonesia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. French President Emmanuel Macron was supposed to deliver a pre-recorded statement on Tuesday, but the government said Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will now deliver the country’s address virtually on the final day.
France and China have reacted angrily to the surprise announcement by Biden, alongside the leaders of Australia and Britain, of a deal to provide Australia with at least eight nuclear-powered submarines. Australia had signed a contract worth at least $66 billion for a dozen French conventional diesel-electric submarines and their construction was already under way.
Le Drian told a news conference Monday that there is a “crisis of trust” between the United States and its oldest ally, France, as well as Europe, which has been excluded from the new US-UK-Australia alliance focused on the Indo-Pacific and aimed at confrontation with China. He said Europeans “should not be left behind,” and need to define their own strategic interests.
World leaders return to UN and face many escalating crises
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World leaders return to UN and face many escalating crises
Trump says Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok
Microsoft and TikTok did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for a comment outside regular business hours.
Trump has previously said that he was in discussions with several parties about purchasing TikTok and expects to make a decision on the app’s future within the next 30 days.
The app, which has about 170 million American users, was briefly taken offline just before a law requiring ByteDance to either sell it on national security grounds or face a ban took effect on Jan. 19.
Trump, after taking office on Jan. 20, signed an executive order seeking to delay by 75 days the enforcement of the law that was put in place after US officials warned that there was a risk of Americans’ data being misused under ByteDance.
EU, Britain to face off in post-Brexit fishing battle case
The bitter arbitration case over sandeels is seen as a bellwether for other potential litigation between London and Brussels in a perennial hot-bed industry, experts said.
Tuesday’s clash at the Hague-based Permanent Court for Arbitration also marks the first courtroom trade battle between the 27-member trading bloc and Britain since it left the EU in 2020.
Brussels has dragged London before the PCA following a decision last year to ban all commercial fishing of sandeels in British waters because of environmental concerns.
London in March ordered all fishing to stop, saying in court documents that “sandeels are integral to the marine ecosystem of the North Sea.”
Because of climate change and commercial fishing, the tiny fish “risked further decline... as well as species that are dependent on sandeels for food including fish, marine mammals, and seabirds.”
This included vulnerable species like the Atlantic puffin, seals, porpoises and other fish like cod and haddock, Britain’s lawyers said.
But Brussels is accusing London of failing to keep to commitments made under the landmark Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which gave the EU access to British waters for several years during a transition period after London’s exit.
Under the deal, the EU’s fishing fleet retained access to British waters for a five-and-half-year transition period, ending mid-2026. After that, access to respective waters will be decided in annual negotiations.
“The EU does not call into question the right of the UK to adopt fisheries management measures in pursuit of legitimate conservation objectives,” Brussels’ lawyers said in court papers.
“Rather, this dispute is about the UK’s failure to abide by its commitments under the agreement.”
London failed to apply “evidence-based, proportionate and non-discriminatory measures when restricting the right to EU vessels to full access to UK waters to fish sandeel,” the EU lawyers said.
Brussels is backing Denmark in the dispute, whose vessels take some 96 percent of the EU’s quota for the species, with sandeel catches averaging some £41.2 million (49 million euros) annually.
“The loss of access to fisheries in English waters could affect relations with the EU, including Denmark, as they are likely to lead to employment losses and business losses overseas,” the EU’s lawyers warned.
The case will now be fought out over three days at the PCA’s stately headquarters at the Peace Palace in The Hague, which also houses the International Court of Justice.
Set up in 1899, the PCA is the world’s oldest arbitral tribunal and resolves disputes between countries and private parties through referring to contracts, special agreements and various treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The EU’s decision to open a case before the PCA “will not have been taken lightly and reflected the political importance it places on fishing rights,” writes Joel Reland, a senior researcher at UK in a Changing Europe, a London-based think tank.
In a number of “influential member states — including France, the Netherlands and Denmark — fishing rights are an important issue, with many communities relying on access to British waters for their livelihoods.”
“This dispute is an early warning that the renegotiation of access rights, before the TCA fisheries chapter expires in June 2026, will be critical for the EU,” said Reland.
A ruling in the case is expected by the end of March.
Trump says will build ‘Iron Dome’ missile shield
- The system “will be made right here in the USA,” the president said
MIAMI: President Donald Trump said Monday he would sign an executive order to start building an “Iron Dome” air defense system for the United States, like the one that Israel has used to intercept thousands of rockets.
“We need to immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be able to protect Americans,” Trump told a Republican congressional retreat in Miami.
Trump said the system “will be made right here in the USA.”
Speaking on the day new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took office, Trump said it was one of four orders he would sign, along with one that would “get transgender ideology the hell out of our military.”
During the 2024 election campaign Trump repeatedly promised to build a version of Israel’s Iron Dome system for the United States
But he ignored the fact that the system is designed for short-range threats, making it ill-suited to defending against intercontinental missiles that are the main danger to the United States.
Trump however again sung the praises of the Israeli system, which Israel has used to shoot down rockets fired by its regional foes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon during the war sparked by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
“They knock down just about every one of them,” Trump said. “So I think the United States is entitled to that.”
Ukraine’s Zelensky says war means mobilization rules cannot be changed
- Members of some units in areas deemed critical to ensuring Ukraine’s defensive lines have not enjoyed any leave since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the rigours of nearly three years of war did not allow for changes in mobilization rules because if soldiers left for home en masse, Russian President Vladimir Putin “will kill us all.”
Zelensky told Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who was released this month after being detained for 21 days in Iran, that the toll of war on Ukrainians and their families underscored the need to bring the conflict rapidly to an end.
Parliament approved new mobilization rules last year to boost numbers of those at the front, but Ukraine’s fighting forces are still badly outnumbered by their Russian adversaries.
“The wartime situation calls for mobilization of people and all the resources we have in the country. Absolutely all of them,” Zelensky said in the interview, excerpts of which were posted on the president’s Telegram channel.
“And, unfortunately, that is the challenge of this war and that is why we have to speed things up to the maximum to end it, to oblige Russia to end this war,” Zelensky said.
“Today, we are defending ourselves. If tomorrow, for instance, half the army heads home, we really should have surrendered on the very first day. That is how it is. If half the army goes home, Putin will kill us all.”
The legislation approved last year, lowered the age of mobilization for Ukrainian men from 27 to 25 years, narrowed exemptions and imposed penalties on evaders.
Zelensky and others have rejected suggestions by politicians in the United States, Ukraine’s biggest Western backer, that the draft age be lowered further on grounds that Ukrainian forces at the front are not sufficiently well armed.
Members of some units in areas deemed critical to ensuring Ukraine’s defensive lines have not enjoyed any leave since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
Russian forces failed in their initial advance on the capital Kyiv, but have since focused their efforts on securing all of Donbas, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in Ukraine’s east.
Russian forces occupy about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory and have been recording their fastest gains since the invasion in their advance in the east, while holding part of four Ukrainian regions.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
US Justice Dept officials involved in Trump prosecutions fired
WASHINGTON: The US Justice Department fired a number of officials on Monday who were involved in the criminal prosecutions of President Donald Trump.
“Acting attorney general James McHenry made this decision because he did not believe these officials could be trusted to faithfully implement the president’s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the president,” a Justice Department official said.
The official did not specify now many people had their employment terminated, but US media outlets said it was more than a dozen and several were career prosecutors with the Justice Department.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal cases against Trump, resigned earlier this month.
Smith charged Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.
Neither case came to trial and Smith — in line with a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president — dropped them both after the Republican won November’s presidential election.
The firing of the Justice Department officials involved in prosecuting Trump was not unexpected.
Trump had vowed before the election to fire Smith “on day one” and accused the Justice Department under Democratic president Joe Biden of conducting a “political witchhunt” against him.
In his inauguration speech, Trump said he would end the “vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government.”
In his final report, Smith said Trump would have been convicted for his “criminal efforts” to retain power after the 2020 election if the case had not been dropped.
Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — the session of Congress held to certify Biden’s win that was violently attacked on January 6, 2021 by a mob of Trump supporters.
Smith also prepared a report into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents but it is being withheld because charges are pending against two of his former co-defendants.
Trump faces separate racketeering charges in Georgia over his efforts to subvert the election results in the southern state, but the case will likely be frozen while he is in office.
Trump was convicted in New York in May of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star. The judge who presided over the case gave him an “unconditional discharge” which carries no jail time, fine or probation.
