Sunday, 20 September 2009
-
FIJI UNITED NATION PEACEKEEPERS ON OBAMA's U.N. REFORM AGENDA
The White House released the text of the following press briefing:
MR. ROBERT GIBBS: Good afternoon. In order to even enliven more greatly the week ahead, to describe in great detail the week ahead and our events at the U.N. General Assembly, we have our U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice with us. We'll walk you through some of that, we'll take some questions, and then we'll do our regularly scheduled TV programming.
AMBASSADOR SUSAN RICE: Good afternoon, everyone. In anticipation of President Obama's historic first visit to the United Nations next week, I'd like to talk to you a bit about the work we've been doing at the U.N. over the past eight months to advance our interests and make Americans safer, and how the President intends to use his time up in the United Nations next week.
The United States has dramatically changed the tone, the substance, and the practice of our diplomacy at the United Nations and our approach to the U.N. as an institution, as well as our approach to multilateralism in general. We start from the premise that this change is necessary because we face an extraordinary array of global challenges - things like poorly guarded nuclear facilities, terrorism by al Qaeda and its affiliates, nuclear challenges from Iran and North Korea, genocide and mass atrocities, cyber attacks on our digital infrastructure, pandemic disease, climate change, international criminal networks and organizations.
These transnational security challenges can only be dealt with in cooperation with other nations. They can't by definition be dealt with by any single country in isolation. In the 21st century America's security and well-being is in fact inextricably linked to the security and well-being of people elsewhere. And the United Nations is thus essential to our efforts to galvanize concerted international action to make Americans safer and more secure.
So in both the Security Council and the United Nations General Assembly, we're working to forge common purpose with other nations. And let me briefly go over the principles that have guided our new approach to the U.N.
First, we work at the U.N. to promote America's core national security interests. On North Korea, we negotiated a unanimous Security Council resolution imposing the toughest sanctions on the books against any country in the world today. We also continue our work in the Security Council to ensure that Iran meets its nuclear obligations and to deal with pressing crises in places from Congo to Somalia. Second, we participate constructively. Rather than throw up our hands and walk away, we're trying to roll up our sleeves and get things done.
So consider the United Nations Human Rights Council. In May, we changed course and sought a seat on the council, and we won that seat with 90 percent of the votes cast. We joined this troubled body fully aware of its many flaws. But we recognize that we can't fix it or contribute to fixing it simply by carping from the outside.
Third, we stand firmly on principle and resolute on issues that matter most to us. But we're not picking petty battles simply for the sake of being contrary. In the past, we've sometimes let ourselves be defined as much by what we stand against as what we stand for.
So we've changed course. We've embraced as our own the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which we had previously shunned. We've rescinded the Mexico City Policy that barred U.S. assistance to programs that support family planning and reproductive health services. We signed the first new human rights convention of the 21st century, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We reversed course to back a statement at the General Assembly opposing violence and discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation. We no longer balk at mentions of reproductive health, or oppose references to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Fourth, we seek constructive working relationships with nations large and small. While we pursue more effective cooperation among members of the Security Council, the 15 members of the Security Council, we're also mindful of the fact that the United Nations consists of 192 member-states. All of them vote in the General Assembly. And more than half of the U.N.'s membership consists of small states with populations of less than 10 million people.
So we work with the vast majority of countries on the basis of both mutual interest and mutual respect to try to bridge old divides and resist the efforts of a handful of customary spoilers to prevent shared progress.
Fifth, we meet our obligations. As we call on others to help reform and strengthen the United Nations, the United States has to do its part as well. And we are. We're paying our bills. We've worked with Congress to pay our dues in full and on time. And thanks to the strong support of Congress, we've been able to clear U.S. arrears to the U.N.'s regular budget and those to its peacekeeping budget, which accumulated from 2005 to 2008. We'll meet our 2009 obligations on the peacekeeping budget in full. And if the administration's FY 2010 budget request is fully funded, we'll keep current on both our regular and peacekeeping accounts, allowing us to start to move towards ending the practice begun in the 1980s of paying our bills to the U.N. and other international organizations nearly a year late.
And finally, we push for serious reform. The U.N. needs both greater efficiency and greater effectiveness. Each dollar must serve its intended purpose. It must be spent cleanly and wisely, be it for development or peacekeeping. We need peacekeeping operations to be planned expertly, deployed more quickly, budgeted realistically, equipped seriously, ably led, and ended responsibly.
In January when I went up for my Senate confirmation hearings, I testified that we would be pursuing four broad long-term priorities at the United Nations: a focus on peacekeeping, development, climate change, and nonproliferation. The President's visit to the United Nations next week will highlight the administration's focus on each of those four priority areas. So let me take you through briefly some of the major events on the President's agenda in what I hope is a fair reflection of chronological order.
On Tuesday, September 22nd, President Obama will deliver remarks at the Secretary General's summit meeting on climate change. This is a head of state-level meeting to open up - open to the entire U.N. membership. So it's an opportunity for the President to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to addressing the challenge of climate change, and discuss solutions with a truly diverse global audience at the highest levels.
The President will also host on the 22nd a lunch for heads of state and government from sub-Saharan Africa. This event will focus on how the United States can work in partnership with African governments to strengthen African economic and social development. The talk will focus primarily on three topics: job creation, especially for young people; creating a more conducive climate for trade and investment; and ways to mobilize African agriculture to create jobs and help feed the continent. Also on the 22nd, the President will have a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, and attend a climate change dinner hosted by the Secretary General.
On Wednesday the 23rd, the President will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama for the first time. He will then deliver his historic first speech to the United Nations General Assembly, and address his view of international cooperation in the 21st century and the need to move beyond old divisions to focus on the future. He will lay out a new direction that he has set for American foreign policy, and talk about our mutual responsibilities to make progress on several key priorities that will advance our common security and prosperity.
Also on Wednesday, the President will host a meeting with countries that contributed the largest numbers of police and troops to the United Nations peacekeeping operations. This is an opportunity for the President to focus attention on reforming and strengthening U.N. peacekeeping for the 21st century, and to recognize the largely unheralded contributions of those that are providing the backbone of these critical peacekeeping operations. The same day, the President will attend Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's annual lunch for heads of state and government. He will meet with President Medvedev of Russia in a bilateral meeting. And that evening he will host, with the First Lady, the traditional U.S. reception for visiting heads of state and delegation.
On Thursday, September 24th, the President will chair a summit-level meeting of the United Nations Security Council on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament. This summit will focus on these topics broadly, very much consistent with the themes that the President outlined in his speech in Prague. This is only the first - excuse me, only the fifth ever summit-level meeting of the Security Council, and the first time an American President will ever have chaired the United Nations Security Council.
Our goal in this regard is to underscore the global reach of proliferation threats, the broadly shared obligation to respond to these threats, and the positive steps that have been taken to reduce nuclear dangers, and the essential role of the Security Council in addressing growing and pressing nuclear threats. So it's a very full agenda, one that we look forward to as a means of underscoring both the value of the institution of the United Nations and the work that needs to be done by us and others to reform and strengthen it to make it as effective as it needs to be to address 21st century challenges, to live up to its potential, and be what its founders envisioned it could be.
So with that I'm happy to take your questions.
President Obama and Ambassador Rice can you please KICK FRANK BAINIMARAMA's TERRORIST "PEACE KEEPERS" OUT OF UN PEACE KEEPING MISSIONS NOW TO BE IN LINE WITH THE UNITED NATIONS MAIN PURPOSE, WORLD PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS.
P.S. THANK YOU FOR THE SANCTIONS OBAMA, TWEETS ARE AMAZING, NOW WE KNOW YOU HAVE A STRONG WILL IN A STRONG BODY, JUST ONE MORE ACTION PLEASE KEREKERE.Source: US Fed News 09-19-09
-
email
- sent 0
