The unseen photo was taken during their visit to India to promote their 2017 action movie 'xXx: Return of Xander Cage'
And let us build the world we need: peaceful, inclusive and sustainable.#UNGA #UN75 pic.twitter.com/LpI3xiqthy
- António Guterres (@antonioguterres) September 22, 2020
"The Covid-19 pandemic has changed our annual meeting beyond recognition," Guterres said. "But it has made it more important than ever."
While the six-day mainly virtual meeting is unique in the UN's 75-year history, the speeches from leaders hit on all the conflicts, crises and divisions facing a world that Guterres said is witnessing "rising inequalities, climate catastrophe, widening societal divisions, rampant corruption."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized how "countries were left on their own" at the onset of the pandemic, stressing that "effective multilateralism requires effective multilateral institutions." He urged rapid UN reforms, starting with the Security Council, the most powerful body with five veto-wielding members - the US, China, Russia, Britain and France.
By contrast, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose country has reported the second-highest coronavirus death toll after the US, trumpeted his focus on the economy in dealing with the pandemic.
Bolsonaro lambasted "segments of the Brazilian media" for "spreading panic" by encouraging stay-at-home orders and prioritizing public health over the economy. He's downplayed the severity of the coronavirus and repeatedly said shutting down the economy would inflict worse hardship on people.
Guterres told the virtual audience that "too often, there has also been a disconnect between leadership and power."
A year ago, he warned about the rising US-China rivalry, saying Tuesday: "We are moving in a very dangerous direction."
"Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a great fracture - each with its own trade and financial rules and internet and artificial intelligence capacities," Guterres said. "We must avoid this at all costs."
The rivalry between the two powers was in full display as President Donald Trump, in a very short virtual speech, urged the United Nations to hold Beijing "accountable" for failing to contain the virus that originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan and has killed over 200,000 Americans and nearly 1 million worldwide.
China's ambassador rejected all accusations against Beijing as "totally baseless."
"At this moment, the world needs more solidarity and cooperation, and not a confrontation," U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun said before introducing President Xi Jinping's prerecorded speech. "We need to increase mutual confidence and trust, and not the spreading of political virus."
French President Emmanuel Macron said the pandemic should be "an electric shock" to encourage more multilateral action. Otherwise, he warned, the world will be "collectively condemned to a pas de deux" by the US and China in which everyone else is "reduced to being nothing but the sorry spectators of a collective impotence."
Tensions with the US also dominated a fiery speech by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose country is facing the worst Covid-19 crisis in the Middle East. He lashed out at US sanctions but declared that his country will not submit to US pressure.
Rouhani said the United States can't impose negotiations or war on Iran, stressing that his country is "not a bargaining chip in US elections and domestic policy."
Similarly, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the need for multilateral cooperation against the pandemic, urging an end to "illegitimate sanctions" against his country and others that he said could boost the global economy and create jobs.
Amid widespread calls for UN reforms, France's Macron said the global body itself "ran the risk of impotence."
"Our societies have never been so interdependent," he said. "And at the very moment when all this is happening, never have we been so out of tune, so out of alignment."
The unseen photo was taken during their visit to India to promote their 2017 action movie 'xXx: Return of Xander Cage'
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