In his first speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) since taking office, US President Joe Biden said that the world stands at an “inflection point in history” and must move quickly and cooperatively to address the festering issues of the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and human rights abuse. Amid growing China tensions Biden also declared the US is “not seeking a new Cold War.”
The high-level segment of the 76th UNGA began in New York on Tuesday.
Without mentioning China directly, Biden acknowledged increasing concerns about rising tensions between the two nations. But he said, “We are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs.”
“We’ve ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan and as we close this era of relentless war, we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy,” U Biden said, making his first appearance as president at the UN General Assembly. The President noted his decision to end America’s longest war last month, in Afghanistan, and set the table for his administration to shift US attention to intensive diplomacy with no shortage of crises facing the globe. He said he is driven by a belief that “to deliver for our own people, we must also engage deeply with the rest of the world.”
“We’ve ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan,” Biden said. “And as we close this period of relentless war, we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy of using the power of our development aid to invest in new ways of lifting people up around the world.”
“We meet this year in a moment intermingled with great pain and extraordinary possibility. We have lost so much to this devastating pandemic that continues to claim lives around the world and impact so much on our existence. We’re mourning more than 4.5 million people, people of every nation, from every background. Each death is an individual heartbreak,” he said.
He went on to say this is “a decisive decade for our world” which will “quite literally determine our futures.”
“Will we work together to save lives, defeat Covid-19 everywhere, and take the necessary stem to prepare ourselves for the next pandemic, because there will be another one. Or will we fail to harness the tools at our disposal as more virulent and dangerous variants take hold?”
More than 100 heads of state and government will attend the UNGA in-person including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.