For the first time, President Trump appeared before the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, and his speech was a critical one. At a forum on U.N. reforms, Trump said the U.N. has been hampered in “recent years” by “bureaucracy and mismanagement.” Although he praised U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres for putting the “focus more on people and less on bureaucracy,” Trump says more must be done:
“The United Nations was founded on truly noble goals. Yet in recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential because of bureaucracy and mismanagement … We seek a United Nations that regains the trust of the people around the world. In order to achieve this, the United Nations must hold every level of management accountable, protect whistleblowers and focus on results rather than on process.”
Trump also emphasized his belief that no one member state should “militarily or financially” shoulder a greater part of the burden, which does hand in hand with his thoughts on NATO.
At the French mission Monday, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the U.N. is at a precarious juncture as “cooperation has become less easy with increasing questioning of the roles of the multilateral game and with a temptation of withdrawal out of fear or selfishness.”
Trump’s U.N. comments came before a meeting with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was expected to touch on the possibility to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians as well as the future of the nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran.
Trump is scheduled to make full remarks to the General Assembly on Tuesday.
(Via ABC & New York Times)