Biden hails new era of relentless diplomacy in UN address
US president Joe Biden pledged to replace ârelentless warâ with âa new era of relentless diplomacyâ in his first address to the United Nations General Assembly.
Mr Biden referenced his countryâs withdrawal from Afghanistan: âAs I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years the United States is not at war. Weâve turned the page.â
He promised that the âunmatched strengthâ and resources of the US âare now fully and squarely focused on whatâs ahead of us, not what was behindâ.
Mr Biden told other world leaders that the US would spend $10 billion to fight hunger and that he would seek to double US funds to help developing nations respond to climate change to more than $11 billion per year.
China meanwhile, offered its own pledge on climate change with president Xi Jinping announcing that his country would stop building coal-fired power plants abroad and instead âstep up supportâ for developing countries in the areas of green and low-carbon energy.
Mr Bidenâs speech is a decisive shift away from the âAmerica firstâ foreign policy approach of his predecessor Donald Trump, but comes at a time of lingering criticism over the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan and concern about growing tensions with China.
He said, âUS military power must be our tool of last resort, not our firstâ.
âIndeed today many of our greatest concerns cannot be solved or even addressed through the force of arms.â
Mr Biden said âbombs and bullets cannot defend against Covid-19â and that there must be a âa collective act of science and political willâ and action to get vaccines âin arms as fast as possibleâ.
In what is believed to be a reference to China, Mr Biden also said the US is ânot seeking a new cold war or a world divided into rigid blocsâ.
Climate and securityTaoiseach Micheál Martin, who attended the assembly session in New York, welcomed the âstrong themesâ of climate action and the response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Mr Bidenâs speech, saying they âdovetailâ with Irelandâs approach to foreign policy.
He said the sense he got from contributions at the assembly was of âa growing momentum to do much better than we have been on the climate change issueâ.
Mr Martin will chair a UN Security Council meeting on the subject of climate and security on Thursday. He held bilateral meetings with leaders from Nigeria, Colombia and Vietnam among others. He gave an undertaking to the Vietnamese president Nguyen Xuan Phuc that he would raise the countryâs request for assistance in sourcing Covid-19 vaccines at EU level.
Mr Martin also met European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven. They discussed the need to hasten global vaccine distribution and work on EU-US relations.
The three leaders agreed Mr Bidenâs plan to double support to address climate change in developing countries was a âmajor step forwardâ.
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