His speech and any comments about the U.S. confirmed Monday that Xi will give the country’s video address instead. On the latest speakers list released earlier this month, China’s speech was supposed to be delivered on Friday by a deputy prime minister. chief said in an interview this weekend with The Associated Press that Washington and Beijing should be cooperating on the climate crisis and negotiating on trade and technology, but “unfortunately, today we only have confrontation” including over human rights and geostrategic problems mainly in the South China Sea.īiden, in his speech, insisted he was “not seeing a new Cold War or a world divided” and said Washington is ready to work with any nation, “even if we have intense disagreement in other areas.” In his speech, Biden, too, called this moment “an inflection point in history” and said that for the United States to prosper, it “must also engage deeply with the rest of the world.”Īhead of the opening, Guterres warned the world could be plunged into a new and probably more dangerous Cold War unless the United States and China repair their “totally dysfunctional” relationship.
“There are moments in time that are turning points,” he said. The General Assembly's president, Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives, opened debate by challenging delegates to rise to the occasion. election last November Chinese President Xi Jinping, who in a surprise move will deliver a video address and Iran’s recently elected hardline President Ebrahim Raisi. for the first time since his defeat of Donald Trump in the U.S. President Joe Biden, appearing at the U.N. The three most closely watched speakers on Tuesday morning are U.S. Other pressing issues on the agenda of world leaders include rising U.S.-China tensions, Afghanistan’s unsettled future under its new Taliban rulers and ongoing conflicts in Yemen, Syria and Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region. Guterres urged world leaders to bridge six “great divides”: promote peace and end conflicts, restore trust between the richer north and developing south on tackling global warming, reduce the gap between rich and poor, promote gender equality, ensure that the half of humanity that has no access to the Internet is connected by 2030, and tackle the generational divide by giving young people “a seat at the table.” Guterres said people may lose faith not only in their governments and institutions but in basic values when they see their human rights curtailed, corruption, the reality of their harsh lives, no future for their children - and “when they see billionaires joyriding to space while millions go hungry on Earth.” “We are on the edge of an abyss - and moving in the wrong direction," Guterres said. But with the pandemic still raging, about 60 will deliver pre-recorded statements over coming days. in person for the first time in two years. More than 100 heads of state and government kept away by COVID-19 are returning to the U.N. General Assembly’s high-level meeting for leaders of its 193 member nations. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres rang the alarm in his annual state-of-the-world speech at the opening of the U.N. In person and on screen, world leaders returned to the United Nations' foremost gathering for the first time in the pandemic era on Tuesday with a formidable, diplomacy-packed agenda and a sharply worded warning from the international organization's leader: “We face the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetime.”