Nearly 200 leaders will converge on the
world’s most prominent diplomatic stage for five days of speeches, hundreds of
meetings — and clashes over climate change, Iran and trade.
By
Edward Wong, Lara Jakes, Michael Schwirtz and Rick Gladstone
 |
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President
Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine will attend amid concerns
President
Trump has pressured him over American domestic political
issues.
Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
|
The annual United Nations General Assembly
will unfold this week against a backdrop of crises — from the warming planet to
economic uncertainty to flaring conflicts that threaten to further entangle the
United States in the volatile Middle East.
Trade wars, migration, energy supplies,
climate change and the eradication of poverty underpin the basic themes of the
193-member General Assembly agenda. But the actions of the Trump
administration, which has sometimes expressed disdain for international institutions
like the United Nations, have created a common denominator.
“All of the major topics that I think people
will be talking about in the corridors are related to: What is U.S. policy?”
said Jeffrey D. Feltman, a veteran American diplomat and former United Nations
under secretary-general for political affairs.
Some leaders are not coming, notably
Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, as well as
Benjamin Netanyahu, the embattled prime minister of Israel. Also not expected
is President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, regarded by the Trump administration
and about 50 other governments as an illegitimate leader.
But one prominent figure, President Volodymyr
Zelensky of Ukraine, will attend. The Ukrainian leader plans to meet with
President Trump amid growing concerns that the United States leader had pressured
him over American domestic political issues.
There’s also the question of what
governments, especially that of Pakistan, might say about India’s ending of the
autonomous status of contested Kashmir. On Sunday, Mr. Trump appeared with
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India in Houston at a rally called “Howdy,
Modi!”
Some
of the biggest moments and confrontations could happen early in the week. Here
is what to expect:
Like-minded leaders: Bolsonaro, Trump,
el-Sisi, Erdogan.
President Trump, whose penchant for bombast,
scaremongering and diplomatic bombshells is well known, will be surrounded by
like-minded company on Tuesday when the speeches begin.
Mr. Trump will be preceded by President Jair
M. Bolsonaro of Brazil, sometimes called the mini-Trump, a polarizing figure at
home who, like Mr. Trump, dismisses fears about climate change and ridicules
critics on Twitter.
After Mr. Trump comes President Abdel Fattah
el-Sisi of Egypt, the former general who has come to symbolize the repression
of the Arab Spring revolutions — although his appearance was thrown into doubt
this past weekend as protests erupted at home. Then comes President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an autocrat who has bullied critics and whose
government is a leading jailer of journalists.
The
U.S. and Saudi Arabia will press their case against Iran.
Until recently, speculation abounded that Mr.
Trump would make history by meeting with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran. But
the Sept. 14 attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, which American and Saudi
officials blame on Iran, has made such a meeting unlikely at best.
American officials are expected to present
what they have described as evidence that Iran carried out the attack with
drones and cruise missiles. Iran has denied the accusation. Yemen’s Houthi
rebels, who are supported by Iran in their fight against a Saudi-led coalition
that has been bombing their country for more than four years, have claimed
responsibility.
Mr. Rouhani speaks on Wednesday, and he will
almost certainly assert that Mr. Trump ignited the cycle of conflict by
withdrawing last year from the 2015 nuclear agreement with major powers and
reimposing onerous sanctions that are crippling its economy.
The United States is trying to build a
coalition to deter Iran, even if it is unclear what form such deterrence would
take. The General Assembly gives the administration an opportunity to “continue
to slow walk a military response in favor of more coalition-building and
political and economic pressure,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
At
a climate change meeting, American leadership will be absent.
The climate crisis is at the top of the
General Assembly’s agenda. About 60 heads of state plan to speak at the Climate
Action Summit on Monday, and officials aim to announce initiatives that include
net-zero carbon emissions in buildings.
The United States has no such plans — Mr.
Trump announced in 2017 that he was withdrawing the country from the Paris
Agreement on climate change. But some state governors who have formed the
United States Climate Alliance said they would attend the summit and meet with
other delegations.
The
U.S. and China will talk about resolving their trade war. Mr. Trump may raise
other issues.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was
expected to meet with his Chinese counterparts on the sidelines, suggesting
that the administration was seeking to create a more productive atmosphere for
resumed trade negotiations after weeks of acrimony. The two governments
recently paused their escalating tariff battle.
But some administration officials are pushing
for Mr. Trump to address other issues considered sensitive by China, including
the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the repression of Tibetans and the
detentions of more than one million Muslims, mostly ethnic Uighurs. One
official said Mr. Trump should at least criticize China for trying to
intimidate Uighur-American activists.
Mr. Trump has never spoken strongly about
human rights, and he has openly expressed admiration for Mr. Xi and other
authoritarian leaders. But lawmakers in both parties of Congress are pressuring
Mr. Trump to act. Bills on the Uighurs, Tibet and Hong Kong are aimed at
compelling Mr. Trump and the administration to take harder stands.
The
leaders of Japan and South Korea, America’s key Asian allies, are not on
speaking terms.
A protracted feud between Japan and South
Korea, rooted in the legacy of Japan’s wartime occupation, has led to
downgraded trade relations and the end of an intelligence-sharing agreement.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea are
not expected to meet with each other. Whether Mr. Trump can induce them into a
three-way conversation remains unclear. And an objective shared by all three —
North Korea’s nuclear disarmament — may see little or no progress.
While Mr. Moon is expected to urge Mr. Trump
to renew his push for diplomacy with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, no
senior North Korean official plans to attend the General Assembly.
Europe will be pressured to penalize
Venezuela’s government.
Foreign ministers from 18 nations in the
Western Hemisphere, including the United States, planned to meet on Monday to
discuss what can be done regarding Mr. Maduro, who has presided over the
biggest economic collapse in Venezuela’s history and a regional crisis caused
by the exodus of millions of his people.
The push will focus on convincing the
European Union to expand economic sanctions against Mr. Maduro’s loyalists,
including freezing assets they have in Europe. The Europeans may also be
pressed to penalize smugglers of Venezuelan gold into Europe.
Mr. Maduro, who claimed victory in disputed
elections last fall, has retained power despite nine months of demands to
resign by a stubborn opposition movement led by the president of Venezuela’s
Parliament, Juan Guaidó. Negotiations between the Venezuelan rivals collapsed
last week.
Frictions
vex America and Turkey.
Mr. Trump and President Erdogan are expected
to meet on the sidelines, but the outcome is unclear at best. A range of
difficult issues has pit their governments against each other.
The Trump administration is considering
sanctions to punish Turkey, a fellow NATO member, for buying a Russian S-400
missile defense system instead of American-made Patriots. And Mr. Erdogan has
expressed growing anger at the United States over their joint operations in the
northern part of war-ravaged Syria that borders Turkey.
He says the Americans have failed to
establish a safe zone large enough to keep Kurdish fighters out of Turkey,
which regards them as terrorist insurgents. On Saturday, Mr. Erdogan warned
that his forces would take “unilateral actions” along the border if the United
States did not act by the end of the month.
Last,
but not least — Afghanistan.
Someone has to speak last in the list of
national delegations addressing the General Assembly. This year, that place
falls to Afghanistan, just a few weeks after the collapse of talks between the
Taliban and the United States that were aimed at ending the 18-year-old war.
With national elections slated for next
Saturday, President Ashraf Ghani was not expected to attend. Instead,
Afghanistan’s delegation will be led by Hamdullah Mohib, Mr. Ashraf’s national
security adviser.
Mr. Mohib infuriated the Trump administration
in March, when he predicted the peace talks would not end in peace.
Edward Wong is a diplomatic and international
correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 20 years, 13 of those
in Iraq and China. He received a Livingston Award for his Iraq War coverage and
was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists. He has been a Nieman Fellow at
Harvard and a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton. @ewong
Lara Jakes is a diplomatic correspondent
based in the Washington bureau of The New York Times. Over the past two
decades, Ms. Jakes has reported and edited from more than 40 countries and
covered war and sectarian fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, the West Bank
and Northern Ireland.
Michael Schwirtz is an investigative reporter
based at the United Nations. Previously he covered the countries of the former
Soviet Union from the Moscow bureau and reported for the Metro Desk on policing
and brutality and corruption in the prison system. @mschwirtz • Facebook
Rick Gladstone is an editor and writer on the
International Desk, based in New York. He has worked at The Times since 1997,
starting as an editor in the Business section. @rickgladstone
