UH-OH AT UN
Fear what Donald will do KOREA KRAZY TALK
WASHINGTON — President Trump takes to the world’s largest stage this week. And many just offstage are worried.
Trump will deliver his first address Tuesday to the full United Nations General Assembly, an annual gab fest that draws diplomats and leaders from 193 countries.
Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping are coming this year. That gives even more room to a celebrity President who has shaken global institutions with his “America First” policy and who diplomats politely describe as unpredictable.
“People are on tenterhooks,” said Stewart Patrick, an expert on global institutions and governance at the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations. Many diplomats — and even some of Trump’s aides — are hoping he gives a nod to the UN’s higher, historical purposes as well its wellknown failures.
“They are all very anxious to hear what he has to say,” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said Friday at a White House briefing for reporters.
H.R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser, said Trump will emphasize the theme of sovereignty in his bi-lateral and multi-lateral meetings.
Trump will meet the leaders of France and Israel on Monday, and McMaster said he expects “Iran’s destabilizing behavior… to be a major focus.”
After his speech Tuesday morning, Trump will have lunch with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and other leaders. On Wednesday, he will meet with the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, the United Kingdom and the Palestinian Authority. Thursday he meets leaders of Turkey, Afghanistan and Ukraine, as well as South Korea and Japan. Mixed in is a dinner for Latin American leaders, a working lunch for African leaders, and other activities.
Diplomats say they have learned not to overreact to some of Trump’s more inflammatory statements. Mexican officials, for example, have been at the bruising end of many of his tweet storms but they continue to work with his administration. NORTH KOREAN leader Kim Jong Un said his country is nearing “equilibrium” in military force with the United States, as the United Nations Security Council strongly condemned the North’s “highly provocative” ballistic missile launch over Japan on Friday. The North’s official news agency carried Kim’s comments Saturday — a day after the launch from the North Korean capital Pyongyang. The news agency said Kim expressed great satisfaction over the country’s longest-ever ballistic missile launch, which he said verified the “combat efficiency and reliability” of the missile and the success of efforts to increase its power.
“For a number of leaders, this is going to be their first chance to see him, to judge him, to try to get on his good side,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Peter Yeo, president of the Better World Campaign, which advocates improving U.S. relations with the UN, said he hopes Trump’s speech will be “more on the teleprompter side,” meaning scripted, and less on the “campaign stump speech side,” or impromptu.
North Korea’s recent nuclear and missile tests are expected to dominate part of the UN discussions this week. A delegation from Pyongyang is scheduled to attend, although the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, is not among them.
The 15-member Security Council, which includes the U.S., China and Russia, has twice in the last two months unanimously approved tough sanctions against North Korea in an effort to force it to back away from its relentless pursuit of nuclear weaponry.
In his address, Trump is expected to urge other countries to pay more into the UN budget and call for streamlining operations. He will lead a meeting on reforming the UN, a cause he embraced as a candidate.