Secretary-General António Guterres today (4 Feb) said, “a wind of madness is sweeping the globe,” noting that “from Libya to Yemen to Syria and beyond – escalation is back, arms are flowing, and offensives are increasing.”
Speaking to journalists in New York, Guterres said, “there is a feeling of growing instability and hair-trigger tensions, which makes everything far more unpredictable and uncontrollable, with a heightened risk of miscalculation.” Meanwhile, he added, “Security Council resolutions are being disrespected even before the ink is dry.”
The Secretary-General said, “the disquiet in streets and squares across the world is proof that people want to be heard. They want world leaders to answer their anxieties with effective action. That means addressing cascading challenges and breaking what I call the vicious circles that define our day.”
Turning to climate change, the Secretary-General said, “the challenge for this year’s climate conference in Glasgow, COP 26, is clear: all countries must show more ambition on adaptation, mitigation and finance. And the big emitters must lead the way. We need a price on carbon, and an end to subsidies for fossil fuels.”
He said, “we are still seeing too many plans for coal plants – the addiction to coal remains dangerously strong.”
These big emitters, Guterres said, “are well known” including “the European Union, that has affirmed its commitment to it. The United States, China, India, Japan, Russia.”
Responding to questions he said he was “deeply frustrated with what’s happening in Libya” and added that “what’s happening is a scandal.”
He said, “we had a number of countries coming together in Berlin where they committed not to interfere in the Libyan process, and they committed not to send weapons or to participate on any way in the fighting. Now, the truth is that the Security Council embargo remains violated. We still see planes coming both to Misrata and to Benghazi. We haven’t seen any relevant stop in the respect or the disrespect of the arms embargo, and the truce that has lasted for a few days has been dramatically violated and we have seen offensives and military operations of different sorts.”
Asked to name those countries, Guterres said, “we have equipment, namely drones, which provide from the United Arab Emirates. That there’s been movement through Egypt. That you have Turkish troops – that by the way were confirmed by Turkey – and that there are mercenaries from Sudan, and that there was also elements of a Russian private company operating in the country.”
Finally, on the new Middle East peace plan presented by the United States, the Secretary-General said, “we are the guardians of UN resolutions and of international law in relation to the Palestinian question. We are totally committed to the two-state solution and we are totally committed to support Israelis and the Palestinians to come to a peace process with a two-state solution based on international law, based on Security Council and General Assembly resolutions and based on the borders of 1967.”
