US President George W. Bush announced new sanctions yesterday against the military dictatorship in Myanmar, accusing it of imposing "a 19-year reign of fear" that denies basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship.
"Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma," the president said in an address to the UN General Assembly.
Bush also urged other nations to support the struggle for democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.
"The people of Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq have asked for our help and every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand with them," Bush said.
"Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship," the president said. "In Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration [of the UN]."
Bush also said he was willing to consider expanding the UN Security Council and pressed for Japan, a close US ally, to get a permanent seat on the panel.
"The United States is open to this prospect," Bush said. "We believe that Japan is well-qualified for permanent membership on the Security Council and that other nations should be considered as well."
The 15-member Security Council, the most powerful UN body which can make mandatory decisions on war and peace, has five veto-bearing permanent members named when the UN was created in 1945.
The permanent members are Britain, China, France, Russia and the US. Ten other countries rotate for two-year terms according to regions.
A majority of UN members believe the Security Council is unrepresentative and dominated by industrial nations.
Other issues likely to appear in the opening debates of the General Assembly include climate change -- the theme of this year's session.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said at the close of a one-day summit on climate change at the UN on Monday that there was "a clear call from world leaders for a breakthrough on climate change" at key talks in Bali in December.
The Dec. 3 to Dec. 14 conference is tasked with setting down a roadmap for negotiations culminating in a new global deal for addressing global warming.
Also in the spotlight at the UN gathering are efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and civil strife in the Sudanese region of Darfur, where a UN-African Union force is due to deploy next year.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is hoping to convene international peace talks later this year to set out the contours of a Palestinian state.
The four sponsors of the stalled peace process -- the US, the EU, Russia and the UN -- have expressed support for the gathering.
Also yesterday, France chaired a Security Council summit on Africa expected to endorse sending EU and UN troops to Chad and the Central African Republic to protect civilians reeling from a spillover of the Darfur conflict.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy chaired the session, attended by representatives of all 15 council members, including Bush.
Participants in the debate are widely expected to overwhelmingly approve a French-drafted resolution to endorse the deployment of a joint UN-EU force to the two impoverished former French colonies.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was due to address the world body later in the day, and was expected to try to reassure the international community that it has nothing to fear from Tehran's civilian nuclear program.
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