United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres during an interview with The Hindu in New Delhi on September 12, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Tayyab Hussain

In a speech last year, you said that the promise of never again for genocide is dangerously close to being broken. 80 years Since World War II and the UN’s creation, do you think the United Nations is no longer able to fulfil the role it was created for? 

Well, first of all, let’s be very clear. The United Nations has guaranteed that we would not have a third world war. We have many conflicts around the world, but we have not two superpowers fighting each other directly. And this is largely because of the work of the United Nations has done during these 18 years. The problem is that we now have a strong geopolitical divide. On one hand, we have superpowers that have not yet recognised that their power has limits and get into adventures that produce terrible results. The division between these superpowers creates a situation of impunity for mid-sized powers to start wars, not respecting any rules, with a total sense of impunity. With the Security Council that is paralysed because of the divisions that exist at the level, especially of the superpowers, this has created a world that became very, very dangerous. 

I do want to get to the role of the superpowers in all of this, but on news now that groups in Yemen have captured the Bab el-Mandeb strait. Can the United Nations help with the situation?

We have been trying to help as much as possible in relation to guaranteeing something that is fundamental, which is the freedom of navigation. The rights and freedoms of navigation that must be respected in the Black Sea, in the Strait of Hormuz, in the Bab el-Mandeb. That is essential. No tolls, no permission to some and the refusal to others. Freedom of navigation is a basic principle we are defending. On top of that, United Nations has been involved in creating mechanisms and proposing those mechanisms in order to allow for these blockades to at least have exceptions in relation to food and fertilisers. We did it with the Black Sea Grain Initiative [in the Russia-Ukraine conflict]. We have made an offer in relation to fertilisers for the Strait of Hormuz that Iran has not accepted. We are also interested in discussing, both for the Ukrainians and for the Russians, the possibility of exporting food, fertilisers and energy in the Black Sea. This would require, again, political will.

Leaders and high officials from Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia are here at the BRICS Summit. Are you going to take the opportunity to get that political will going? 

I’ve been talking to all of them. But the question is, when the superpowers are divided, there is no respect. Everybody believes that everybody can do whatever they want, and what we see is mid-sized powers getting involved in different conflicts. Look at Sudan. How many countries are involved in the conflict in Sudan? It would be enough to have a conflict between Sudanese, but then lots of other countries get involved because there is a sense of impunity. As the superpowers are divided, the Security Council is paralysed. There is no way to put order in the world. So, we badly need to overcome this divide. Superpowers must also understand that their powers have limits. I mean, if you look at what happened in Ukraine, Russia’s attacked Ukraine four-and-a-half years ago, and it goes on and on. Even the U.S. with Iran, we see the difficulties that U.S. is facing. I think it’s time for superpowers to understand the limits of their power, and that will help the world become more peaceful.

India has declared it stands ready to offer its services for peace efforts in Ukraine. Did you discuss that with Prime Minister Modi? 

We discussed both the war in Ukraine and the situation in the Gulf with a common, clear perspective — that we need peace and at the same time we need, even if peace will not be immediately in place, we need absolute freedom of navigation. That is an area where we are totally in agreement. I’m very appreciative of the efforts of mediation that India has had — the contacts, the permanent contacts with the parties to the conflicts in order to create conditions to allow for trust to be reestablished. One of the biggest problems is that there is a total lack of trust and even a reasonable agreement is not made because each party thinks that the other will not implement the agreement. The existence of true mediators, messengers of peace, of bridge-builders is extremely important and no country is better placed than India.

At BRICS they are discussing the future of global governance. Is it time for a reformed UN or is it time to push for a completely overhauled multilateral system?

Well, we have been pushing a lot for fundamental reforms, and the question is a question of power. We still have a number of institutions, multilateral institutions, economic governance mechanisms that correspond to the situation of the world in 1945. It is obvious that we need a deep reform in the UN, especially in the Security Council. We are doing a lot of reforms in the operational aspects of the UN, but the central question is a question of power. This Security Council does not correspond anymore to the world of today. It creates a problem of legitimacy, and it creates a problem of effectiveness. The Bretton Woods system doesn’t correspond to the reality of the emerging economies that are underrepresented in an obvious way, both in the World Bank and the IMF and in several other institutions. So, we need to readjust the power systems and the mechanisms of governance in the world to the reality of today’s world instead of the reality of 1945. This is a hard battle. What I have been recommending is more than a simple reform. It is really an overhaul.

Even so, it’s incremental. The question is if the UN is broken, does it need to be fixed or replaced?

But the UN is not broken. I mean, look at all the humanitarian action that is done in the world. Even with less resources, even with the cuts that were made, no UN institution has collapsed. and they are going on working and supporting people in the most dangerous places in the world. Look at peacekeeping, still active in the most dangerous locations. Look at the support the UN has been providing to the reforms in international financial architecture. Our involvement in artificial intelligence — the first international scientific independent panel on artificial intelligence was created in the UN. The first global dialogue on artificial intelligence was created in the UN, very much in line with the initiative that India has taken. I mean, many things demonstrate that the UN is full of vitality and is able to inclusively reform its own ways of work, its own structures. But there is, as I said, a central question, and the central question is the question of power. Power relations in this world are distorted, and that makes the Security Council — the central entity for the preservation and peace and security in the world — completely non-operational.

The UN has now adopted a resolution to reform the Map the world uses to be more representational of size. Has India raised concerns over the map online at the UN website that draws parts of Indian territory disputed with Pakistan and China separately?

There is no such a thing as a “UN map with borders”. The resolution that was approved in the General Assembly is not a map. It is a resolution that, and I think quite correctly, says that there are distortions in the landmasses that correspond [to real sizes] and also to power relations in the past. Those distortions should be corrected. However, the UN has not published any map with borders, and it’s not for the UN to define those borders.

So, there’s nothing to do with the border or disputed territories between two countries.

There is a map on the UN’s website that represents what was seen as the new map. 

That’s not an [official] UN map. It is the contribution of an NGO. That map is indicative, but there is not at all any definition by the UN of what borders should be. 

Of course, it also raises one of the challenges you have dealt with as UN Secretary General, and that is the India-Pakistan conflict. When you had come to India in 2018, your first visit, you had spoken hopefully of trying to help or you had offered your good offices to help with the India-Pakistan situation to mediate if required. Was there a time in which you did actually mediate between the two sides? The U.S. claims it did. 

Well, I don’t know if the U.S. mediated or not. I’m not a mediator. Let’s be clear. I respect the two countries. I discuss issues with the leaders of the countries. I hope that it will be possible for the two countries to come together, but the UN is not directly involved in any mediation process. In any case, to mediate, you need the agreement of both parties. That isn’t the case here.

We aren’t just seeing superpowers carry out wars. But superpowers now offering alternatives to the UN- like the U.S. Board of Peace, and China’s Global Governance Initiative. 

Do you think the Board of Peace is an alternative thing? 

It’s what the U.S. is presenting it as. 

Even the U.S. has always said that this is not to replace the UN, and in the global governance initiative in China, it’s clear that the UN should be at the center of the global governance. 

But these are unilateral initiatives that take the place of what the UN system itself is doing. 

Those initiatives are not correcting anything that the UN is doing and the Board of Peace, let’s be clear, is a proposal that is trying to solve the question of Gaza. Let’s be clear it is not something to replace the UN. The UN is present all over the world and I still believe that the UN is an indispensable instrument in order to minimise the enormous existential risks that we face. The risk of inequality, the risk of climate, and the risk of unregulated artificial intelligence. 

Another threat to the UN comes from Israel — it has not just exited many UN institutions and declared you personally PNG, not given you a visa. So many UN officials have been killed. 

I didn’t ask for any visa. If there is something that is clear, it is that the UN, and I’m responsible largely for that, has had a very clear position always. Be it in the Russian conflict, be it in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the UN has always been a reference point in defence of the charter, in defence of international law, in defence of international humanitarian law.  It is not our fault that unfortunately several countries around the world, and sometimes some of the most responsible, have apparently decided that international law must not be respected, and that the law of the force must prevail over the force of the law. 

Do you think Israel’s war in Gaza qualifies as the “never again”, the genocide that you spoke about in that speech that I referred to? 

Genocide is a legal definition that belongs to the courts and in principle to the International Criminal Court. What we say is that what is happening in Gaza is absolutely outrageous. It’s absolutely unacceptable. It’s a dramatic violation of all principles under international law. But, we are not giving a legal definition of that. It’s so horrible that it doesn’t even need to be qualified as such. 

Do you wish it would be qualified? 

This is not our matter. We are not qualifying in legal terms what happens in different circumstances. What we are describing is a reality that is a reality in which the Palestinian people have suffered dramatically after what was also something condemned clearly — the barbarous attacks by Hamas on October 7 (2023).

So, what happens when the next country decides that it too can keep UN officials out, keep the Secretary-General out, carry out these kind of killings — 70,000 dead, 20,000 of them children? 

The UN does not have the power to stop it, and that is the problem that I mentioned in the beginning. We have a power relations situation in which you have a number of superpowers that are divided. That creates a situation in which countries like Israel or Iran, or any other think that they can do whatever they want. There is no instrument in the international community to guarantee that those violations of international law are effectively punished. 

There is a UN Secretary-General election this year. Do you think you need another term just to resolve these issues? 

No, I absolutely need not to have another term. 

There are many women candidates for your position. Do you hope to be succeeded by the first woman UN Secretary-General? 

Well, I don’t interfere with the campaign, but I think it’s absolutely natural that in the UN, like in any other country, women have access to the highest position. And I think it’s a matter of gender equality and gender parity. During these last 10 years, we reached full parity, women and men, at 170 positions of leadership in the UN, with 55% of women in the resident coordinators of the UN in the different countries of the world. We will get to the 50% in relation to the international stuff of the UN all over the world. This was a true revolution to ensure that the power relations are changed to guarantee that women really have the role that they should have. If an organisation is led by women and men at the same level, the problems of bias against women in governance, in the way that organisations operate, will disappear. 

The actual definition of a glass ceiling is that you have women in all these positions, but not at the top- would you like to see a woman as Secretary-General

I would be very happy with that.

Given the challenges that we have just discussed and there are so many more, wars, pandemics, climate disasters, including what we just saw in Nepal, what do you think was your biggest achievement and what do you think was your biggest failure? 

It is for others to decide what my achievements or failures are. I think that what I’m happier with is with the fact that we were able to navigate during these 10 years, with full respect for the principles of the UN. We never had double standards.

The worst failure has been the failure to make countries understand, and especially those countries that have the instruments of power, that we absolutely need to seriously reform the global governance institutions, Security Council. system and others. 

I thought you were going to say — the fight against climate change, lack of commitments for the Green Climate Fund 

That is not the failure of the UN. The UN has been in the front line of fighting for climate action. That is the failure of member states that go on putting their short-term interests before what is an existential share to humankind. The UN is what the member states want the UN to be. Member states should not use the UN as an excuse for what they are not able to do or are unwilling to do. 

 Have you given a thought to what next? What will you do after you step down as UN Secretary-General? 

I have absolutely no idea. I’ve been working hard to make sure that I do what I have to do until the 31st of December. Afterwards, we will see. 

FILE PHOTO: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
| Photo Credit: AP

A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said the world body “hopes” that in India and any country that is having elections, people’s “political and civil rights” are “protected” and everyone is able to vote in a “free and fair” atmosphere.

Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric made these remarks on March 28 while he was responding to a question on the “political unrest” in India ahead of the upcoming national elections in the wake of the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the freezing of the opposition Congress Party’s bank accounts.

“What we very much hope that in India, as in any country that is having elections, that everyone’s rights are protected, including political and civil rights, and everyone is able to vote in an atmosphere that is free and fair,” Mr. Dujarric said at the daily press briefing on March 28.

The response from the United Nations comes a day after the U.S. also reacted to a similar question on Mr. Kejriwal’s arrest and freezing of the Congress party’s bank accounts.

On March 27, hours after India summoned a senior U.S. diplomat to protest remarks on Mr. Kejriwal’s arrest, Washington reiterated that it encourages fair, transparent, timely legal processes.

On the U.S. diplomat being summoned in Delhi, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said “I’m not going to talk about any private diplomatic conversations. But of course what we have said publicly is what I just said from here, that we encourage fair, transparent, timely legal processes. We don’t think anyone should object to that, and we’ll make the same thing clear privately.” Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials summoned Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Gloria Berbena to their office in South Block in the Indian capital. The meeting lasted for more than 30 minutes.

On March 28, India said the U.S. State Department’s recent remarks on the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are “unwarranted” and asserted the country is “proud of its independent and robust democratic institutions” and committed to protecting them from any form of undue external influences.

Any “external imputation” on India’s electoral and legal processes is “completely unacceptable”, MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in New Delhi during his weekly press briefing.

In India, legal processes are driven “only by the rule of law”, Mr. Jaiswal said on March 28.

Earlier on March 27, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said in a statement that India took strong objection to the remarks of the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department about certain legal proceedings in India.

“India’s legal processes are based on an independent judiciary which is committed to objective and timely outcomes. Casting aspersions on that is unwarranted,” the MEA had said. The Enforcement Directorate has arrested Kejriwal in a money laundering case linked to the excise policy ‘scam’.

The case pertains to alleged corruption and money laundering in formulating and executing the Delhi government’s excise policy for 2021-22 which was later scrapped.

Eminent technology experts hailing from India have been named to a new global advisory body announced by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to support the international community’s efforts to govern artificial intelligence.

The High-Level Multistakeholder Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence, announced by the UN Chief here on October 26, brings together experts from the government, the private sector, the research community, civil society, and academia, and is focused on building a global scientific consensus on risks and challenges, helping harness AI for the Sustainable Development Goals, and strengthening international cooperation on AI governance, a statement said.

Among the members of the advisory body are the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology Amandeep Singh Gill; co-founder of iSPIRT Foundation, a non-profit technology think tank that has conceptualised India Stack, Health Stack, and other digital public goods Sharad Sharma and Lead Researcher at Hugging Face, India Nazneen Rajani.

Addressing reporters here, Mr. Guterres said “In our challenging times, AI could power extraordinary progress for humanity.

“From predicting and addressing crises to rolling out public health services and education services, AI could scale up and amplify the work of governments, civil society and the United Nations across the board,” he said.

Mr. Guterres noted that for developing economies, AI offers the possibility of leapfrogging outdated technologies and bringing services directly to people where needs are bigger and for the people who need them most.

Before he was appointed the Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology, Mr. Gill was the CEO of the International Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence Research Collaborative (I-DAIR) project, based at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

Previously, he was the Executive Director and Co-Lead of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (2018-2019).

Mr. Gill was India’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva (2016-2018).

Mr. Sharma also co-founded Teltier Technologies, a wireless infrastructure startup now part of CISCO. An active angel investor with over two dozen investments, he was instrumental in the success of India’s first IP-focused fund, the India Innovation Fund. He is a member of the National Startup Advisory Council, Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) Financial and Regulatory Technology Committee and chairs the International Financial Services Centres Authority’s (IFSCA) Expert Committee on Asset Tokenization and the Taskforce on Digital Public Infrastructure in the ThinkTank20 (T20) group of G20.

Ms. Rajani is the Research Lead at Hugging Face, specialising in AI Safety and Alignment, leveraging Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF). She is recognised as an expert and thought leader in Large Language Models (LLMs) robustness and evaluation. Before her tenure at HuggingFace, Ms. Nazneen successfully led a team of esteemed researchers at Salesforce Research, dedicated to developing robust natural language generation systems built upon LLMs, according to her profile.

Ms. Rajani earned her Doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, where her research focused on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the interpretability of Machine Learning models.

She has over 40 publications in premier conferences and her research has garnered significant attention from prominent media outlets.

Other members of the advisory body include President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, U.S. Vilas Dhar; President and Founder of Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer; Special Advisor to the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Federal Government of Brazil Estela Aranha; Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence of Spain Carme Artigas; Chief Innovation Officer and Deputy Director General at Clalit Health Services Israel Ran Balicer; Aerospace Coordinator of the German Federal Government Anna Christmann; Chief Responsible AI Officer at Microsoft Natasha Crampton and Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo Arisa Ema.

Mr. Guterres said the transformative potential of AI for good is difficult even to grasp. “And we are in urgent need of this enabler and accelerator,” he said.

He noted that many countries are already reeling from the impact of the climate crisis. The 2030 Agenda – our global blueprint for peace and prosperity on a healthy planet – is in deep trouble.

“AI could help to turn that around. It could supercharge climate action and efforts to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030,” he said adding that all this depends on AI technologies being harnessed responsibly, and made accessible to all – including the developing countries that need them most.

He stressed that as things stand, AI expertise is concentrated in a handful of companies and countries, and this could deepen global inequalities and turn digital divides into chasms.

“The potential harms of AI extend to serious concerns over misinformation and disinformation; the entrenching of bias and discrimination; surveillance and invasion of privacy; fraud, and other violations of human rights,” Mr. Guterres said.

He said without entering into a host of doomsday scenarios, it is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion, and threaten democracy itself.

“For all these reasons, I have called for a global, multidisciplinary, multistakeholder conversation on the governance of AI so that its benefits to humanity – all of humanity – are maximized, and the risks contained are diminished,” he said adding that the new Advisory Body is the starting point for it.

The UN statement added that the formation of the AI Advisory Body marks a significant step in the United Nations’ efforts to address issues in the international governance of artificial intelligence.

The new initiative will foster a globally inclusive approach, drawing on the UN’s unique convening power as a universal and inclusive forum on critical challenges, it said.

The Body will help bridge other existing and emerging initiatives on AI governance, and issue preliminary recommendations by end-2023, with final recommendations by summer 2024, ahead of the Summit of the Future.

Trucks carrying aid wait to exit, on the Palestinian side of the border with Egypt, as the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 21, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened on October 21 to let desperately needed aid flow to Palestinians for the first time since Israel sealed off the territory following Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago.

Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have fled their homes, are rationing food and drinking filthy water. Hospitals say they are running low on medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide power blackout. Israel has launched waves of airstrikes across Gaza that have failed to stem ongoing Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.

The opening came after more than a week of high-level diplomacy by various mediators, including visits to the region by U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Israel had insisted that nothing would enter Gaza until some 200 people captured by Hamas were freed and the Palestinian side of the crossing had been shut down by Israeli airstrikes.

More than 200 trucks carrying roughly 3,000 tonnes of aid had been positioned near the crossing for days. But Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera news, which is close to security agencies, said just 20 trucks had crossed into Gaza on October 21. Hundreds of foreign passport holders also waited to cross from Gaza to Egypt to escape the conflict.

The Hamas-run government in Gaza said the limited convoy “will not be able to change the humanitarian catastrophe that Gaza is currently enduring,” calling for a secure corridor operating around the clock.

The opening came hours after Hamas released an American woman and her teenage daughter, the first captives to be freed after the militant group’s October 7 incursion into Israel. It was not immediately clear if there was any connection between the two.

Hamas released Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie, on Friday for what it said were humanitarian reasons in an agreement with Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation that has often served as a Mideast mediator.

“The two had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate Jewish holidays,” the family said. They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting 203 others.

Mr. Biden spoke with the two freed hostages and their relatives. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which transported the freed Americans to Israel, said their release was “a sliver of hope.”

Hamas said in a statement that it was working with mediators “to close the case” of hostages if security circumstances permit. The group said it is committed to mediation efforts by Egypt, Qatar and others.

There are growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says would be aimed at rooting out Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years. Israel said on Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the small but densely-populated Palestinian territory.

Israel has also traded fire along its northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, raising concerns about a second front opening up. The Israeli military said on Saturday it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent rocket launches and attacks with anti-tank missiles.

Israel issued a travel warning on Saturday, ordering its citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan — which made peace with it decades ago — and to avoid travel to a number of Arab and Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, which forged diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have erupted across the region.

A potential Israeli ground assault is likely to lead to a dramatic escalation in casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion. Palestinian militants have continued to launch unrelenting rocket attacks into Israel — more than 6,900 projectiles since October 7, according to Israel.

More than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry run by Hamas. That includes a disputed number of people who died in a hospital explosion earlier this week.

Speaking on Friday about Israel’s long-term plans for Gaza, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan that seemed to suggest Israel did not intend to reoccupy the territory it left in 2005.

First, Israeli airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas. Next will come a lower intensity fight to defeat remaining pockets of resistance. And, finally, a new “security regime” will be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Gallant said.

Mr. Gallant did not say who Israel expected to run Gaza if Hamas is toppled or what the new security regime would entail.

Israel occupied Gaza from 1967 until 2005, when it pulled up settlements and withdrew soldiers. Two years later, Hamas took over. Some Israelis blame the withdrawal from Gaza for the five wars and countless smaller exchanges of fire since then.

Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate from north to south within the sealed-off enclave on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. But Israel has continued to bomb areas in southern Gaza where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and some appear to be going back to the north because of bombings and difficult living conditions in the south.

“Generators in Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, were operating at the lowest setting to conserve fuel while providing power to vital departments such as intensive care, hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said. Others worked in darkness. The lack of medical supplies and water make it difficult to treat the mass of victims from the Israeli strikes,” he said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had received a threat from the Israeli military to bomb Al-Quds Hospital. It said Israel has demanded the immediate evacuation of the Gaza City hospital, which has more than 400 patients and thousands of displaced civilians who sought refuge on its grounds.

It was not clear if there was an agreement for generator fuel to be brought in through Rafah.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar at a global event on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York.
| Photo Credit: PTI

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held a series of bilateral meetings with his global counterparts on the sidelines of the high-level United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session in New York, exchanging views on reforming multilateralism and cooperation in G20.

He held separate bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Mexico, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Armenia on September 24. Jaishankar said it was a “real pleasure” to meet with Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alicia Bárcena of Mexico.

“Discussed taking forward our Privileged Partnership focussing on business, science & technology, education, economy and traditional medicine. Also exchanged views on reforming multilateralism and our work together in G20,” he said in a post on X.

The External Affairs Minister also met his counterpart from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Elmedin Konakovic and discussed growing bilateral ties with a focus on trade and economy.

Terming his meeting with Konakovic on the sidelines of the UNGA session as “good”, Jaishankar said, “Discussed growing our bilateral ties with (a) focus on trade and economy.” Jaishankar also met with his counterpart from Armenia, Ararat Mirzoyan.

“Appreciate his sharing assessment of the current situation in the Caucasus. Affirmed our strong bilateral relationship,” he posted on X.

Jaishankar is scheduled to meet UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the President of the 78th UN General Assembly session, Dennis Francis, on Monday.

On Saturday, Jaishankar called on Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and discussed the progress of the bilateral development partnership and the situation in Myanmar. The two leaders met on the margins of the high-level UN General Assembly session in New York.

“Pleased to call on Prime Minister Hun Manet of Cambodia. Conveyed the warm greetings of PM @narendramodi. Discussed the progress of our development partnership,” Jaishankar posted on X.

“Noted as well our expanding defence and cultural cooperation. Exchanged views on Myanmar,” he added. Jaishankar also held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Egypt, Guinea Bissau, Cyprus and Uganda on Saturday.

He began a nine-day visit to the U.S. on Friday, primarily to attend the annual session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York and to host a special event on Global South. He would also participate in various plurilateral and bilateral meetings in New York.

He is scheduled to address the General Debate from the UN General Assembly hall on Tuesday.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar at a global event on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York.
| Photo Credit: PTI

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held a series of bilateral meetings with his global counterparts on the sidelines of the high-level United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session in New York, exchanging views on reforming multilateralism and cooperation in G20.

He held separate bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Mexico, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Armenia on September 24. Jaishankar said it was a “real pleasure” to meet with Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alicia Bárcena of Mexico.

“Discussed taking forward our Privileged Partnership focussing on business, science & technology, education, economy and traditional medicine. Also exchanged views on reforming multilateralism and our work together in G20,” he said in a post on X.

The External Affairs Minister also met his counterpart from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Elmedin Konakovic and discussed growing bilateral ties with a focus on trade and economy.

Terming his meeting with Konakovic on the sidelines of the UNGA session as “good”, Jaishankar said, “Discussed growing our bilateral ties with (a) focus on trade and economy.” Jaishankar also met with his counterpart from Armenia, Ararat Mirzoyan.

“Appreciate his sharing assessment of the current situation in the Caucasus. Affirmed our strong bilateral relationship,” he posted on X.

Jaishankar is scheduled to meet UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the President of the 78th UN General Assembly session, Dennis Francis, on Monday.

On Saturday, Jaishankar called on Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and discussed the progress of the bilateral development partnership and the situation in Myanmar. The two leaders met on the margins of the high-level UN General Assembly session in New York.

“Pleased to call on Prime Minister Hun Manet of Cambodia. Conveyed the warm greetings of PM @narendramodi. Discussed the progress of our development partnership,” Jaishankar posted on X.

“Noted as well our expanding defence and cultural cooperation. Exchanged views on Myanmar,” he added. Jaishankar also held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Egypt, Guinea Bissau, Cyprus and Uganda on Saturday.

He began a nine-day visit to the U.S. on Friday, primarily to attend the annual session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York and to host a special event on Global South. He would also participate in various plurilateral and bilateral meetings in New York.

He is scheduled to address the General Debate from the UN General Assembly hall on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
| Photo Credit: AP

“More than 30 Atlantic countries on four continents committed, on September 18, to bolster coordination on economic development, environmental protection, maritime issues and more,” the White House said.

The adoption of the Declaration on Atlantic Cooperation was completed on Monday evening at a meeting hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ahead of the start of the annual UN General Assembly meeting.

“The Atlantic connects and sustains us like never before,” Mr. Blinken told the gathering. He noted that the Atlantic hosts the largest amount of international shipping and, through undersea cables, is a thoroughfare for data traffic than any other ocean.

However, he said the Atlantic is also threatened by climate change, which has brought stronger and more devastating storms to vulnerable coastal communities and illegal fishing. “It’s the heating and cooling of the Atlantic that is driving global climate and weather patterns,” he said.

The declaration includes a commitment to an open Atlantic region free from interference, coercion or aggressive action. The signatories also agreed to uphold sovereign equality, territorial integrity and political independence of states, and recognises the role that each of the nations play in the Atlantic.

The effort to tighten coordination between coastal Atlantic countries across Africa, Europe, North America and South America was launched on the sidelines of last year’s General Assembly with the creation of the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, a forum conceived by the Biden administration.

Nations that endorsed Monday’s declaration are: Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Canada, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Iceland, Ireland, Liberia, Mauritania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Portugal, the Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Spain, Togo, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay.

The White House pitched the forum as a way to improve cooperation between northern and southern Atlantic countries on key issues and come to agreement on a set of principles for the Atlantic region.

The World Bank estimates that Atlantic Ocean commerce contributes $1.5 trillion annually to the global economy and it expects that figure to double by 2030. Sustainable ocean economy sectors are estimated to generate almost 50 million jobs in Africa and to contribute $21 billion to the Latin American economy. But challenges include illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing; natural disasters; and illicit trafficking.

The declaration comes as thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of New York as world leaders gather in New York for the General Assembly. The activists are pushing world leaders to act with greater haste to curb climate change.

Many of the leaders of countries that cause the most heat-trapping carbon pollution will not be in attendance for this year’s General Assembly. And some who are in attendance, including President Joe Biden, aren’t planning to attend a climate-focused summit on Wednesday organised by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.