The 23-nation ISSG, chaired by Kerry and his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, met in NY on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
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President Obama delivered an unapologetic defense of global integration at the United Nations Tuesday, arguing that the world is more peaceful and prosperous than it’s ever been. “We all face a choice, press forward with a better model or retreat into a world sharply divided”, he said.
Obama said, “We must go forward, not backwards”.
In the year since, Moscow’s leverage in the conflict has strengthened significantly.
Yet he said dark history shows that we reach a certain level of enlightenment only to fall backwards.
The refugee issue, meanwhile, was for the first time the subject of a daylong United Nations summit on Monday.
“Powerful nations contest the constraints placed on them by worldwide law”.
“Our identities do not have to be defined by putting someone else down”, said Obama.
The attempt to cooperate on how to resolve Syria’s civil war, however, Obama acknowledged as unresolved, and he defended the military actions the United States has taken in the theater.
In what appeared to be a dig at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, he added: “The world is too small for us to simply be able to build a wall and prevent (extremism) from affecting our own societies”.
As far as the threat posed by migrants, Mr. Trump also has cited an internal Homeland Security Department audit showing that the US mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from “special interest countries” that present national security concerns or high rates of immigration fraud.
The U.S. said countries taking part were also pledging to increase humanitarian aid by $3 billion.
“We have to imagine what it would be like for our family, for our children if the unspeakable happened to us.”
Obama spoke for about 45 minutes.
In his final speech before the U.N.as president, Obama urged the worldwide community to press on with cooperation and global integration against a growing trend of “aggressive nationalism” and “crude populism”.
Addressing the UN General Assembly, the President of Uganda today pointed out that two issues facing his country are missing from the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by 193 countries a year ago.
“As a friend of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, it pains me that this past decade has been ten years lost to peace”, Ban said.
Ban released years of pent up anger at leaders and countries who have contributed to suffering and conflict across the globe.
His speech to the opening of the UN General Assembly followed a deadly attack on a UN aid convoy on Monday that killed more than 20 people.
“Just when we think it can not get any worse, the bar of depravity sinks lower”, Ban said.
But the focus of his annual state of the world report was on the myriad problems on the global agenda – and the leaders who fail to tackle them.
Just as Obama and fellow heads of state were gathering Monday, Syria’s military declared the week-old cease-fire over following numerous breaches and airstrikes hitting an aid convoy to a distressed part of Syria, which the US blamed on Syria or Russian Federation. He cited the rise of “people power” with mobile phones that now blanket the world, reductions in poverty, political transitions in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, and the cease-fire agreement in Colombia.
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“Human progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God”, and he exhorted the U.N.to join him in being co-workers with god.
