UN Chief Says People Are Looking to Leaders for Way Out of Current Global ‘Mess’ 

18 September 2023, US, New York: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the conference on the status of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Summit ahead of the General Debate of the UN General Assembly. (dpa)
18 September 2023, US, New York: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the conference on the status of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Summit ahead of the General Debate of the UN General Assembly. (dpa)
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UN Chief Says People Are Looking to Leaders for Way Out of Current Global ‘Mess’ 

18 September 2023, US, New York: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the conference on the status of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Summit ahead of the General Debate of the UN General Assembly. (dpa)
18 September 2023, US, New York: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the conference on the status of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Summit ahead of the General Debate of the UN General Assembly. (dpa)

Leaders of a world fractured by war, climate change and persisting inequality gather under one roof Tuesday to hear the UN chief summon them to take united action on humanity’s huge challenges – and to start delivering their own assessments on the most global of stages.

“People are looking to their leaders for a way out of this mess,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said ahead of the annual gathering of presidents and premiers, ministers and monarchs at the General Assembly.

He said the world needs action now – not merely more words – to deal with the worsening climate emergency, escalating conflicts, “dramatic technological disruptions” and a global cost-of-living crisis that is increasing hunger and poverty.

“Yet in the face of all this and more,” Guterres said, “geopolitical divisions are undermining our capacity to respond.”

This year’s week-long session, the first full-on meeting of world leaders since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted travel, has 145 leaders scheduled to speak. It’s a large number that reflects the multitude of crises and conflicts.

But for the first time in years, US President Joe Biden, who will speak soon after the UN chief, will be the only leader from the five powerful veto-wielding nations on the UN Security Council to address the 193-member assembly.

China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Rishi Sunak are all skipping the UN this year. That should put the spotlight on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who will be making his first appearance at the assembly’s podium later Tuesday, and on Biden, who will be watched especially for his views on China, Russia and Ukraine.

The absence of leaders from the four Security Council powers has sparked grumbling from developing countries who want major global players to listen to their demands – including for money to start closing the growing gap between the world’s haves and have-nots.

The G77, the major UN group of developing countries that now has 134 members including China, lobbied hard to make this year’s global gathering focus on the 17 UN goals adopted by world leaders in 2015. Those are badly lagging at the halfway point to their 2030 due date.

At a two-day summit to kick-start action to achieve the goals, Guterres pointed to grim findings in a UN report in July. He said 15% of some 140 specific targets to achieve the 17 goals are on track. Many are going in the wrong direction, and not a single one is expected to be achieved in the next seven years.

The wide-ranging goals include ending extreme poverty and hunger, ensuring every child gets a quality secondary education, achieving gender equality and making significant inroads in tackling climate change — all by 2030.

At the current rate, the report said, 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty and 84 million children won’t even be going to elementary school in 2030 – and it will take 286 years to reach equality between men and women.

Guterres told leaders at Monday’s opening of the summit he called to rescue the 17 sustainable development goals, or SDGs, that they promised in 2015 to build “a world of health, progress and opportunity” for all people – and to pay for it.

Soon after he spoke, leaders from the 193 UN member nations adopted a 10-page political declaration by consensus which recognizes that the goals are “in peril.” But it reaffirms more than a dozen times, in different ways, leaders’ commitment to achieve the SDGs, reiterating their individual importance.

The declaration is short on specifics, but Guterres said he was “deeply encouraged” especially by its commitment to improving developing countries’ access to “the fuel required for SDG progress: finance.” He pointed to its support for an SDG stimulus of at least $500 billion a year, aimed at offsetting challenging market conditions faced by developing countries.

At the summit, leaders were then supposed to make pledges to meet the SDGs.

As an example, Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who chairs the UN group of least developed countries, said they need “massive scaling up of affordable finance” including through the SDG stimulus. He said foreign investment to the least developed countries fell about 30% in 2022 compared to 2021, and he urged developed countries to be more generous in helping the world’s poorest countries.

There are also hundreds of side events during high-level week.

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell told reporters after a closed meeting to try to revive the decades-old peace process between Israel and the Palestinians that there was “a strong commitment to the two-state solution.”

He said there were 60 participants at the meeting organized by the EU, the Arab League and several other countries, and called it “a good starting point.”

There was “an injection of new political will,” Borrell said, and three senior-level working groups were established to examine what Israeli-Palestinian peace would look like. He said they will start work in a month in Brussels.



IAEA Calls on Iran to Urgently Cooperate to Prove Its Nuclear Program Is Peaceful  

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi holds a news conference after the first day of the agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 9, 2025. (Reuters)
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi holds a news conference after the first day of the agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 9, 2025. (Reuters)
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IAEA Calls on Iran to Urgently Cooperate to Prove Its Nuclear Program Is Peaceful  

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi holds a news conference after the first day of the agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 9, 2025. (Reuters)
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi holds a news conference after the first day of the agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 9, 2025. (Reuters)

Head of the UN nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi raised on Monday fresh concerns over Iran's failure to fully cooperate with inspections, warning that this is preventing independent verification of its nuclear activities.

He called on Iran urgently to cooperate fully and effectively with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to resolve the outstanding safeguards issues.

The IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors is holding a quarterly meeting in Vienna this week. The United States, Britain, France and Germany plan to propose a resolution for the board to adopt that would declare Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations over other failings outlined in the report.

Speaking from Vienna, Grossi said: “I am convinced that the only way forward goes through a diplomatic solution, strongly backed by an IAEA verification arrangement.”

“I will continue to support and encourage the US and Iran to spare no effort and exercise wisdom and political courage to bring this to a successful conclusion,” he added.

Grossi spoke about his recent talks with Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Cairo, through the mediation of Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.

“The effect of a stabilized situation in Iran with regards to its nuclear program will be immediate and bring the Middle East one big step closer to peace and prosperity,” he stressed.

The IAEA chief said that his last quarterly report on the NPT Safeguards Agreement with Iran, contains a comprehensive and updated assessment in connection with past and present outstanding issues regarding Tehran's nuclear program.

His report is in response to the Board's resolution of November last year.

“As you know, the Agency found man-made uranium particles at each of three undeclared locations in Iran – at Varamin, Marivan and Turquzabad – at which we conducted complementary access in 2019 and 2020,” he said.

Since then, “we have been seeking explanations and clarifications from Iran for the presence of these uranium particles, including through a number of high-level meetings and consultations in which I have been personally involved,” he remarked.

Grossi then expressed regret that Iran has repeatedly either not answered, or not provided technically credible answers to, the IAEA's questions. It has also sought to sanitize the locations, which has impeded Agency verification activities, he said.

He added that the Agency's comprehensive assessment of what took place – based on a technical evaluation of all available safeguards-relevant information – has led it to conclude that these three locations, and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear program carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material.

The IAEA concluded that Iran did not declare nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at these three undeclared locations, Grossi went on to say.

As a consequence of this, the IAEA is not in a position to determine whether the related nuclear material is still outside of safeguards.

In addition, he said, “Iran's unilateral decision to stop implementation of modified Code 3.1 has led to a significant reduction in the Agency's ability to verify whether Iran's nuclear program is entirely peaceful and is also contrary to its legal obligations set out in Article 39 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement and in the Subsidiary Arrangements.”

Grossi also noted that the rapid accumulation of highly enriched uranium is of “serious concern” and adds to the complexity of the issues he has described.

“Given the potential proliferation implications, the Agency cannot ignore the stockpiling of over 400 kg of highly enriched uranium,” he said.

Meanwhile, Grossi said that Iran's acquisition of confidential UN nuclear watchdog documents is a “bad” step that goes against the spirit of cooperation that should exist between the agency and Tehran.

The IAEA said in a confidential report on Iran to member states on May 31 that it had “conclusive evidence of highly confidential documents belonging to the Agency having been actively collected and analyzed by Iran.”

“That raises serious concerns regarding Iran's spirit of collaboration” and could undermine the IAEA's work in Iran, it warned.

Tehran said in a statement to member states last week that the accusation was “slanderous” and had been made “without presenting any substantiated proof or document.”

“Here, unfortunately, and this dates to a few years ago ... we could determine with all clarity that documents that belong to the Agency were in the hands of Iranian authorities, which is bad,” Grossi told a press conference on Monday. “We believe that an action like this is not compatible with the spirit of cooperation.”

Asked about the nature of the documents and whether they were originally Iranian ones that had been seized by Israel and supplied to the agency, he replied: “No. We received documents from member states, and also we have our own assessments on documents, on equipment, etc.”

In May 2022, Israel accused Iran of stealing classified documents from the IAEA to help it hide evidence of its nuclear program.

“Iran stole classified documents from the UN's Atomic Agency IAEA and used that information to systematically evade nuclear probes,” then Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote on Twitter.