US says some 360000 refugee spots pledged at United Nations

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has accused the Syrian government of killing the most civilians during the country’s five year conflict and said “powerful patrons that keep feeding the war machine also have blood on their hands”.

Obama emphasized the need not to demonize refugees, implicitly hitting back against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s proposals to ban Muslim immigrants (including refugees) from entering the US and to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

Obama’s speech in NY on Tuesday was a defense of globalism and an attack on authoritarians, tribalists and populists in which he never mentioned the Republican vying to succeed him in office, bloomberg.com reported.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Newly named British Prime Minister Theresa May, making her first address at the United Nations after her country’s vote to leave the European Union, said Brexit was not a signal that Britain was retreating from its global responsibilities.

“And if we were to turn refugees away simply due to their background or religion, or, for example, because they are Muslim, then we would be reinforcing terrorist propaganda that nations like my own are somehow opposed to Islam, which is an ugly lie that must be rejected in all of our countries by upholding the values of pluralism and diversity”, he said at the summit attended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Bangladesh Prime Minsiter Sheikh Hasina.

“Today, a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself”, Obama said.

In a closing dispatch to the world he’s tried to shape, President Barack Obama conceded Tuesday that the United States and other major powers have only limited ability to solve the world’s most profound problems, including Syria’s civil war.

“President Obama came straight to the point about the situation millions of refugees are facing. And danger defines the days of many”.

“We can only realize the promise of this institution’s founding – to replace the ravages of war with cooperation – if powerful nations like my own accept constraints”, Obama declared “Sometimes I’m criticized in my own country for professing a belief in worldwide norms and multilateral institutions”.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II offered an impassioned defense of Islam while condemning extremists as outlaws who want to “drag us back to the dark ages”.

“The choices of individual human beings created a United Nations, so that a war like [the Second World War] that would never happen again”.

Obama was unabashed in his critique of Russian Federation as he laid out his diagnosis of the world’s ills.

Obama says democracy is hard work and takes generations, but that the gains are worth the effort. His tough talk illustrated how little progress has been made in reconciling the two powers’ diverging interests that have allowed the Syria crisis to continue to fester.

USA standing in the world is an aberration, Obama noted.

“It’s a truism that global integration has led to a collision of cultures: trade, migration, the internet; all these things can challenge and unsettle our most cherished identities”.

Mr Obama welcomed the pledges of increased assistance.

These commitments are a much needed step in the right direction to help children and families who have been driven from their homes, but significant gaps remain. “Expectations rise, then, faster than governments can deliver, and a pervasive sense of injustice undermines people’s faith in the system”, he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Josh Lederman, Darlene Superville and Kevin Freking of The Associated Press and by Greg Jaffe and David Nakamura of The Washington Post.