The president says that in order to move forward, “we do have to acknowledge that the existing path to global integration requires a course-correction”.
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“We are facing a crisis of epic proportions”, President Obama told the Leaders Summit on Refugees at the United Nations. That will involve continuing the push to make the global economy work better – not just for those at the top. Over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut from almost 40 per cent of humanity to under 10 per cent. Thousands of children have died in bombings.
Seven years after he first appeared before world leaders at the United Nations to call for a “new era of engagement with the world, ” Mr Obama argued that he had delivered on his pledge.
Co-hosts of the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees, which US President Barack Obama presided over, were Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, Jordan, Mexico and Sweden. He then urged the leaders to raise their glasses and toast “to peace, prosperity and human rights across the world”.
Before the UN, Obama restated the case for multilateralism and an America that knows the limits of its own power.
The US has traditionally been the second speaker in the General Debate after Brazil.
Speaking moments later, US President Barack Obama delivered his own final speech to the General Assembly, describing a world in the throes of a contest between authoritarianism and liberal democracy, between fundamentalism and tolerance.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched a blistering attack on the Government of Syria this morning.
Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that “theoretically, the majority of the countries of the world stood by the Syrian people, but practically they were left alone supported only by some loyal friends”.
Many Republican leaders have called for a halt to the admission of refugees from Iraq, Syria and other countries embroiled in conflict, saying they pose a security threat. This is hard politically.
“I want to emphasize that from their perspective this isn’t charity”. And while he said that those sentiments can not be dismissed, they would ultimately be self-defeating.
Those intractable problems are largely the focus of Obama’s bilateral agenda in NY this week, including during talks with Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi Monday to plot a campaign to retake ISIS-held Mosul. “Countless human beings will suffer”.
“We see too many governments muzzling journalists and quashing dissent and censoring the flow of information”, he said. For we have shown that we can choose a better history.
He accused Russian Federation of trying to “recover lost glory through force” and said that a peaceful resolution in the South China Sea was more important than “arguing over rocks and reefs”.
“Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel”.
But the main thrust of his remarks remained the need for overall global cooperation as inspired by the founding of the United Nations itself, even if this means curbing the power of the strongest countries.
“Indeed our worldwide order has been so successful that we take it as a given that great powers no longer fight world wars”. “Binding ourselves to global rules, over the long term, enhances our security”.
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“This is what I believe: that all of us can be co-workers with God”, he said. Russia’s military intervention in Syria has helped bolster Mr Assad’s standing without pulling it into the military “quagmire” that Mr Obama had predicted.
