Trump wants leaner UN

Pledge to work with organisation comes with plan to cut red tape

US President Donald Trump has made his debut at the UN, using his first speech to urge the 193-nation organisation to cut red tape and more clearly define its global mission.

But while Mr Trump chastised the UN – an organisation he sharply criticised as a candidate for president for its spiralling costs – he said the US would “pledge to be partners in your work” to make the UN “a more effective force” for peace.

“In recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential due to bureaucracy and mismanagement,” said Mr Trump, who rebuked the UN for a ballooning budget. “We are not seeing the results in line with this investment.”

The US pays about 22 per cent of the UN budget.

Mr Trump opened his remarks by plugging his nearby residential tower, the Trump World Tower.

Built in 2001, the skyscraper in the United Nations Plaza was briefly the tallest all-residential tower in the world.

“I actually saw great potential across the street, to be honest with you, and it’s only for the reason that the UN was here that that turned out to be such a successful project,” Mr Trump said, after an introduction from UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Mr Trump pushed the UN to focus “more on people and less on bureaucracy” and to change “business as usual and not be beholden to ways of the past which were not working”.

But he also complimented the steps the UN had taken in the early stages of the reform process and made no threats to withdraw his nation’s support.

Speaking briefly with reporters, Mr Trump revamped his campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, saying his main message is: “Make the United Nations great. Not again. Make the United Nations great. Such tremendous potential, and I think we’ll be able to do this.”

His tone was in contrast to his last maiden appearance at a global body, when he stood at NATO’s Brussels headquarters in May and scolded member nations for not paying enough and refusing to explicitly back its mutual defence pact.

While running for office, Mr Trump labelled the UN as weak and incompetent, and not a friend of either the US or Israel. But he has softened, telling ambassadors from UN Security Council countries at the White House this year the UN had “tremendous potential”.

He praised UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres, who shared Mr Trump’s vision for a less wasteful UN so it could “live up to its full potential”.