UN meeting to tackle N. Korea, refugees

Trump’s appearance his first before body

UNITED NATIONS — Facing an escalating nuclear threat from North Korea and the mass flight of minority Muslims from Myanmar, world leaders gather at the United Nations starting Monday to tackle these and other tough challenges — from the spread of terrorism to a warming planet.

The spotlight will be on U.S. President Donald Trump and France’s new leader, Emmanuel Macron, who will both make their first appearance at the General Assembly. They will be joined by more than 100 heads of state and government, including Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s longestserving leaders.

While Trump’s speeches and meetings will be closely followed, it will be North Korea, which Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls “the most dangerous crisis that we face today,” that will be most carefully watched. No official event addressing Pyongyang’s relentless campaign to develop nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States is on the U.N. agenda, but it is expected to be the No. 1 issue for most leaders.

Not far behind will be the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, victims of what Guterres calls a campaign of ethnic cleansing that has driven nearly 400,000 to flee to Bangladesh in the past three weeks. The Security Council, in its first statement on Myanmar in nine years, condemned the violence and called for immediate steps to end it. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is hosting a closed meeting on the crisis Monday, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s contact group on the Rohingyas is scheduled to meet Tuesday.

Guterres said leaders would also focus on a third major threat — climate change.

Several terrorism-related events are on the agenda. Macron is holding a meeting Monday with leaders of five African nations — Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad — that are putting together a 5,000-strong force to fight the growing threat from extremists in the vast Sahel region.

A side event Wednesday on “Preventing Terrorist Use of the Internet” will be attended by senior representatives of major social media companies. Cohosts Britain, France and Italy said a global response is needed “to make the online space a hostile environment for terrorists.”

Trump has accused Iran of supporting terrorists and is threatening to rip up the 2015 deal to rein in its nuclear program. With a U.S. decision due in October, ministers from the six parties to the agreement are expected to meet next week. The five others strongly support the deal.

Trump has also been critical of the United Nations and has promised to cut the U.S. contribution to its budget, which is the largest. So some diplomats were surprised that the United States would sponsor an event Monday on reforming the 193-member world body.

Trump and Guterres will speak, and the United States has asked all countries to sign a declaration on U.N. reforms. Over 100 have added their names, but Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Friday that “we are not sure we will sign this declaration.”

He said that while “lots of ideas contained in this document are important and look similar to what the secretarygeneral proposes,” U.N. reforms should result from negotiations among all countries instead of from “a declaration of likeminded countries.”

The Security Council is holding a high-level meeting Wednesday on U.N. peacekeeping operations, which cost nearly $8 billion a year. The United States, which pays over 28 percent of the peacekeeping budget, is reviewing all the missions in an effort to cut costs and make them more effective.