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Trump Pushes U.N. on Reform and Hints He May Quit Iran Nuclear Deal Trump Pushes U.N. on Reform and Hints He May Quit Iran Nuclear Deal
(about 4 hours later)
UNITED NATIONS — President Trump on Monday opened his first visit to the United Nations since taking office with a polite but firm call for the 72-year-old institution to overhaul itself and a veiled threat to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement. UNITED NATIONS — The polished and protocol-obsessed diplomats of the United Nations hardly knew what to expect when President Trump arrived at their citadel along the East River on Monday for the first time since taking office. But this was not it.
In a meeting with counterparts from around the world, Mr. Trump said the United Nations had grown too bureaucratic and ineffective and should reorient its approach. He complained that spending and staff at the United Nations had grown enormously over the years but that “we are not seeing the results in line with this investment.” Instead of a tiger, they got a tabby. Mr. Trump, the apostle of America First who has heaped scorn on global institutions, ripped up international agreements and quarreled even with allies, offered a subdued and largely friendly performance on the opening day of his inaugural visit to the United Nations.
“That’s why we commend the secretary general and his call for the United Nations to focus more on people and less on bureaucracy,” Mr. Trump said, with Secretary General António Guterres sitting beside him. “We seek a United Nations that regains the trust of the people around the world. In order to achieve this, the United Nations must hold every level of management accountable, protect whistle-blowers and focus on results rather than on process.” He praised Secretary General António Guterres for tackling mismanagement and bureaucracy. He complimented the United Nations — and himself — by boasting that he made the right decision to build a high-rise tower opposite its headquarters. Even his Twitter feed hewed closely to the sort of scripted lines his predecessors might have used: “great week ahead,” “looking forward to meeting,” “productive first day.” He came, he saw, he gripped and grinned.
He added that any reform should ensure that no single member “shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden, and that’s militarily or financially,” a sore point for many American conservatives who bristle at the share of United Nations costs borne by the United States. Mr. Trump said nothing about whether he would pursue his proposal to radically cut American funding for the organization. “We pledge to be partners in your work,” Mr. Trump told a room full of world leaders as he embraced an effort to overhaul the organization. “And I am confident that if we work together and champion truly bold reforms, the United Nations will emerge as a stronger, more effective, more just and greater force for peace and harmony in the world.”
He later met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, in the first of a string of sessions he will conduct with counterparts during four days in New York, and used the occasion to once again hint that he could pull out of the Iran deal negotiated by President Barack Obama along with the other four permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany. Mr. Netanyahu planned to press Mr. Trump to either revise the agreement or scrap it. But if the most undiplomatic of modern presidents avoided a confrontation on Day 1, it may have only been to soften up the crowd for a tougher message on Tuesday when he addresses the General Assembly. In a speech drafted by his hard-line policy adviser, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump plans to challenge the world to do more to counter threats from Iran and North Korea.
Asked by reporters whether he would withdraw, Mr. Trump said, “You’ll see very soon. You’ll be seeing very soon.” He added: “We’re talking about it constantly. Constantly. We’re talking about plans constantly.” “It appears that he left out the anti-U. N. rhetoric he was so fond of during the campaign and instead recognized the potential of the U.N. to be involved in solving global crises and with an important role to play,” said Rachel Stohl, a scholar at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research organization. By Tuesday, she said, “I would expect him to play to his base a bit and call for greater action with regards to Iran and North Korea.”
The president has until mid-October to certify under an American law whether Iran is complying with the deal, a certification he has grudgingly made twice already this year but that he has told advisers he does not want to make again. If he were to refuse to do so, it could potentially unravel the agreement. While he has made a few international trips as president, this is Mr. Trump’s first experience with such a varying collection of world leaders — with vastly different issues — all at once. His first overseas trip started off smoothly with largely on-message stops in Saudi Arabia and Israel, only to generate a furor later in the week when he went to Europe and refused to explicitly endorse NATO’s commitment to mutual defense.
In a harsh message to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors compliance with the nuclear agreement, Mr. Trump on Monday warned that the United States could withdraw if the accord is not properly policed. “We will not accept a weakly enforced or inadequately monitored deal,” Mr. Trump said in a message read by Rick Perry, the energy secretary, at the agency’s annual meeting in Vienna, according to news reports. “The president is not one to pull punches,” said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of PEN America, a human rights group, and a former State Department official under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Iran has accused Mr. Trump of failing to comply with the deal by undercutting it and slapping sanctions on Tehran for other activities, like ballistic missile tests, an assertion it repeated in Vienna on Monday. Ms. Nossel said Mr. Trump seemed to be “at an inflection point with his political base” and might feel pressure to lash out. “I hope he resists the temptation to treat the U.N. as a punching bag in order to please conservatives as they witness him waver on other hot-button issues,” she said.
“The American administration’s overtly hostile attitude and actual foot-dragging policies and measures aim at undermining the nuclear deal and blocking Iran’s legitimate benefits from its full implementation,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, according to news reports. The president started his day meeting with counterparts about overhauling the United Nations. He complained that its spending and staff had grown enormously but that “we are not seeing the results in line with this investment.”
Iran has suggested it may pull out, but analysts are skeptical that it would do so because it has benefited from the agreement that lifted international sanctions in exchange for temporarily curbing its nuclear program. Still, his criticism was mild compared with the bombast of the past. As recently as December, he dismissed the United Nations as “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time” and as president he had yet to meet with Mr. Guterres.
At the same time, Iranian officials have continued to make hostile threats toward Israel. “We will destroy the Zionist entity at lightning speed, and thus shorten the 25 years it still has left,” said Seyyed Abdolrahim Mousavi, the commander in chief of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, according to Iranian media outlets quoted by the Jerusalem Post. On Monday, he commended the secretary general for seeking “to focus more on people and less on bureaucracy.” He added: “We seek a United Nations that regains the trust of the people around the world. In order to achieve this, the United Nations must hold every level of management accountable, protect whistle-blowers and focus on results rather than on process.”
The meeting with Mr. Netanyahu focused on Iran, although Mr. Trump also repeated his commitment to finding peace between the Israelis and Palestinians despite growing doubts about his initiative. “I think there’s a good chance that it could happen,” he said. “Most people would say there’s no chance whatsoever.” He will meet with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday. Mr. Trump said any reform should ensure that no member “shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden, and that’s militarily or financially,” a nod to conservatives who bristle at the United Nations costs borne by the United States. Mr. Trump said nothing about whether he would pursue his proposal to radically cut American funding for the organization.
The meeting with Mr. Netanyahu was followed by another with President Emmanuel Macron of France where the two traded warm words and recalled Mr. Trump’s visit to a Bastille Day military parade in Paris in July. Mr. Trump will also host a dinner on Monday night with Latin American leaders that could focus on Venezuela’s increasingly harsh domestic crackdown and economic crisis. The event, organized by Mr. Trump’s envoy to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, was part of a still-vague effort to revamp the United Nations system. Her blueprint contains proposals that have been circulated for years. Its significance lies in its support for the United Nations’ very existence rather than a bludgeoning of it, and Ms. Haley said 128 countries had backed it so far.
The president’s comments to the United Nations meeting on Monday morning lasted only four minutes and included none of the bombast he had directed at foreign institutions in the past. As recently as December, after winning the presidential election but before being sworn in, Mr. Trump dismissed the United Nations as “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.” As president, he announced he was pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations. “It was a good day for Nikki Haley” and Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the president’s national security adviser, said Bruce Jones, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. “They pulled off an effective alignment between Trump’s priority — namely better burden sharing — and U.N. reform.”
The tension has gone both ways. Last month, the United Nations human rights chief chastised Mr. Trump for his repeated attacks on the news media, saying that they could incite violence and set a bad example for other countries. Mr. Jones said it was also “a good day” for Mr. Guterres “as the threatened rift between Trump and U.N. was bridged,” then noted: “Tomorrow comes the pressure — on Iran and North Korea.”
At a news conference at the French mission on Monday, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s foreign minister, described the context in which Mr. Trump arrived. “There’s a worrying degradation of the international environment,” he said. “Never since the end of the Cold War have dissensions, tensions, the level of conflict been so high in a world that is more interdependent than ever.” Mr. Trump later met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, in the first of a string of sessions he will conduct with counterparts during four days in New York. Mr. Netanyahu pressed Mr. Trump to either revise the Iran nuclear agreement negotiated by Mr. Obama or scrap it.
“And what is worse is despite globalization, cooperation has become less easy with increasing questioning of the roles of the multilateral game and with a temptation of withdrawal out of fear or selfishness,” Mr. Le Drian added. Asked by reporters if he would withdraw, Mr. Trump said: “You’ll see very soon. You’ll be seeing very soon.” He added: “We’re talking about it constantly. Constantly.”
No mention was made during Mr. Trump’s opening appearance on Monday of the global crises that the United Nations has rung alarm bells about: attacks on the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, climate change, the nuclear threat in North Korea, and a record 65 million people displaced from their homes. The president later met with President Emmanuel Macron of France and the two called each other by their first names as they traded warm words and recalled Mr. Trump’s visit to a Bastille Day military parade in Paris in July. They saved disagreement over the climate accord until the cameras were off. Mr. Trump then hosted a dinner with Latin American leaders, where he assailed Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, for “stealing power” from the people and wrecking the economy.
Mr. Trump’s main message to the visiting heads of state and government will come on Tuesday when he addresses the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. Aides have said he will stress “sovereignty and accountability,” a contrast to his predecessors who used the annual occasion to rally joint action on issues like terrorism, weapons proliferation and climate change. “Our goal must be to help them and restore their democracy,” he said.
The president began his remarks on Monday with a compliment to the United Nations — and to himself. He cited his days as a real estate developer and his decision to build Trump World Tower opposite the organization’s headquarters, a building where several foreign diplomats working at the United Nations have their official residences. Mr. Trump’s main message will come on Tuesday when he addresses the General Assembly. Aides have said he will seek to explain how his America First approach squares with a robust international body with the argument that nations that pursue their own interests can come together for common causes.
“I actually saw great potential right across the street, to be honest with you, and it was only for the reason that the United Nations was here that that turned out to be such a successful project,” Mr. Trump said. The address will offer challenges for a president whose most animated public speeches feed off a lively crowd response. In the setting of the United Nations, where words are translated into multiple languages to an audience from varied cultures, jokes and casual references generally do not work.
The event, organized by Mr. Trump’s envoy to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, was part of a still-vague effort to revamp the United Nations system. President George W. Bush often said it was “like speaking to the wax museum — no one moves.” Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, told a forum hosted by the Concordia Summit on Monday that his United Nations speeches were the toughest of his career.
Ms. Haley’s overhaul blueprint contains proposals that have been circulated for years. Its significance lies in its support for the United Nations’ very existence rather than bludgeoning it, and Ms. Haley said 128 countries had backed it so far. Her blueprint was also an unequivocal show of support for Mr. Guterres, who would be granted chief-executive-style power to make fixes that he deems necessary. Mr. Trump’s attempt at a joke on Monday seemed to elude some of the foreign leaders in the room. He cited his days as a real estate developer and his decision to build Trump World Tower opposite the organization’s headquarters, a building where several foreign diplomats working at the United Nations have their official residences.
Mr. Guterres showered Mr. Trump with gratitude and went on to cite his own frustration with the system. “Someone recently asked what keeps me up at night. My answer was simple: bureaucracy,” Mr. Guterres said. “Fragmented structures. Byzantine procedures. Endless red tape.” “I actually saw great potential right across the street, to be honest with you,” he said, “and it was only for the reason that the United Nations was here that that turned out to be such a successful project.”
Mr. Trump offered words of support. “We pledge to be partners in your work,” he said, “and I am confident that if we work together and champion truly bold reforms, the United Nations will emerge as a stronger, more effective, more just and greater force for peace and harmony in the world.”