UNITED NATIONS – The annual gathering of leaders at the UN General Assembly is taking place this year in the shadow of Queen Elizabeths funeral a
The annual gathering of leaders at the U.N. General Assembly is taking place this year in the shadow of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral and as the war in Ukraine heads into a possibly decisive period.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is skipping the Queen’s funeral to remain in New York to oversee an Education Summit on Monday. He will then participate in the opening of the annual debate Tuesday morning, telling reporters it would be “inconceivable” that he would miss it.
U.S. President Joe Biden as host country leader would traditionally be the second head of state to address the assembly Tuesday, but as he will be attending Elizabeth’s funeral Monday, U.S. officials say his speech will now shift to Wednesday.
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Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be coming to New York, but despite this, their conflict will dominate the agenda.
“I think that Joe Biden and other Western leaders will use this as an opportunity to simply hammer home their anger with Russia over this war,” Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group, told VOA.
He said Western leaders will also be seeking to shore up support from some non-Western countries they feel are trying to avoid taking sides or criticizing Russia.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters Friday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “tests the fundamental principles that the U.N. was founded on.” She urged the international community not to abandon those values.
“We must double down on our commitment to a peaceful world and hold even closer our deeply held principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, peace and security,” she said.
“And that’s why next week is so critical. We believe this is a moment to defend the United Nations and to demonstrate to the world that it can still take the world’s most pressing global challenges on.”
On Thursday, the U.N. Security Council will hold a ministerial level meeting on the situation; it could see some heated exchanges between Russian and Western officials. There will also be a separate side event that day on accountability for war crimes committed in Ukraine.
But despite what will be many meetings and events about the conflict, even the secretary-general is not optimistic that there will be the opportunity for any ground-breaking diplomacy on the sidelines of the annual debate.
