World leaders opened their annual UN debate yesterday, with top geopolitical issues like the crisis in Georgia, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and rights abuses in Darfur overshadowed by the global financial crisis.
More than 120 heads of state or government are attending the weeklong General Assembly’s general debate in New York, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was to open at 9am.
Britain’s UN Ambassador John Sawers told reporters on Monday that the financial crisis would be “uppermost on the minds” of world leaders who “will want to address that issue as well as issues on the UN agenda.”
PHOTO: AFP
Indeed US President George W. Bush, who will address the assembly for the last time before he leaves office, was expected to “talk some about the recent action he took to help stabilize our markets and the global impact of that,” his spokesman Gordon Johndroe said on Monday.
Bush has been pushing the US Congress to approve his proposed US$700 billion bailout, but his Democratic critics and even some fellow Republicans have criticized the plan.
Bush is also expected to urge Russia to honor its commitment to fully withdraw its troops from Georgia and, according to Johndroe, “will talk about the role of multilateral institutions, the need for them to be effective in combating terrorism, but also help spread freedom.”
Another keynote speaker scheduled yesterday was French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency and who brokered the truce deal which ended the five-day war in August between Russia and Georgia for control of the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
In the afternoon, it was to be Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s turn to take the floor.
It would be Ahmadinejad’s fourth visit to the US for the UN General Assembly since his election in 2005. He is also due to meet students, religious leaders and foreign politicians.
The firebrand Iranian leader has used previous UN visits to attack Iran’s arch-foes, the US and Israel, and to defend Tehran’s nuclear program which the West fears could be used for weapons development.
Foreign ministers of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States are to meet tomorrow on the sidelines of the assembly debate to weigh prospects for a fourth round of UN sanctions against Iran for its nuclear defiance.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was also scheduled to address the assembly yesterday and was expected to appeal for world support in his country’s conflict with Russia.
One major theme for this year’s debate will be the flagging battle to achieve the poverty reduction Millennium Development Goals by a 2015 deadline against a backdrop of soaring food and energy prices.
A summit meeting on implementing the goals is scheduled for tomorrow on the margins of General Assembly. Various world leaders and top officials from the private sector, foundations and civil society are expected to attend.
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