UN Ideals Point Way to Solving World’s Crises — Obama at UN

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the 70th General Debate with a speech in which he called for the situation in Syria to be referred to the worldwide Criminal Court and said that five countries – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey and the United States – are key to finding a solution to the conflict, now in its fifth year, and which has claimed 250,000 lives.

In September of 2000, the largest gathering of world leaders came together to declare something entirely new: Together, we would form a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty through clear cut, time-bound goals known as the Millennium Development Goals.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the General Assembly later Monday, he spoke about a “great and tragic migration of peoples” that requires members of the U.N.to unite to stabilize Syria.

By tradition, each year, the Secretary-General draws lots to select which among the UN’s 193 Member States will occupy the first seat in the General Assembly Hall throughout the yearlong session. Moreover, leaders will also have discuss the mushrooming crisis and urge nations to embrace more migrants fleeing due to terror and persecution in troubled hot spots of Iraq and Syria.

These two presidents have not held a bilateral meeting for quite a few time.

I do want to take this opportunity to welcome all of you once again to the United States and New York City, as we mark the 70th anniversary of this institution. “For peace to have meaning, it must be translated to bread, rice, health and education”, according to U.S. President Barack Obama.

In his address, Ban appealed for more funding of United Nations relief efforts, which he said was “not broken”.

Tusk said there are “other places comparable to us in terms of wealth”, without naming wealthy Gulf countries, which have faced recent criticism over their refugee policies during the growing Syria crisis.

“That means we must do everything we can to close the gap between the world as it is, and the world as it should be”, said Ban. “If that happens without outcome in Ukraine, it can happen in any nation gathered here today”, Obama said.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron echoed Washington’s line that Assad “can’t be part of Syria’s future” but British media reported he will use his United Nations address to abandon a demand that he step down before talks begin.

The peaceful world is under threat from “the outlaws of Islam,” he said, who “target religious differences hoping to kill cooperation and compassion”.

President Obama’s seventh speech to the United Nations was well received on Monday.

But readers may recall Obama’s similar assertion previous year in New York that “the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded and ultimately destroyed”.