Iranian President to Address UN as Leaders Push for Talks With Trump

VOA – A day after U.S. President Donald Trump called Iran one of the world’s “greatest threats,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani gets his turn Wednesday to address the U.N. General Assembly.

Other leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have pushed for Trump and Rouhani to meet on the sidelines of the annual meeting in hopes of addressing the many tensions in current U.S.- Iran relations.

So far, those efforts have been unsuccessful.

“They’re here. We’re here, but we have not agreed to that yet,” Trump said Tuesday.  Rouhani has signaled a willingness to talk, but only if Trump agrees to lift economic sanctions against his country.

The United States put in place measures targeting Iran’s key oil industry after withdrawing last year from the 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program.  Iran has since surpassed some of the limitations, arguing that the other signatories are not living up to their part of the agreement, particularly ensuring it gets sanctions relief.

This month, U.S. officials accused Iran of being responsible for an attack on Saudi oil facilities, which Iran denies.

Also Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is scheduled to speak, in addition to holding talks with Trump.

A July phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy has become the focus of U.S. lawmakers in recent weeks amid reports that Trump urged Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden in connection with a job his son Hunter held with a Ukrainian gas company.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry linked to the events.

The main General Assembly meeting opened Tuesday with a focus on climate change with U.N. Secretary-General saying that while the world is losing that battle, there is still time to reverse the effects of the global phenomenon.

“We are seeing unprecedented temperatures, unrelenting storms and undeniable science,” Guterres said. “The world is starting to move — not fast enough but in the right direction  — away from fossil fuels and towards the opportunities of the green economy.” 

Guterres said solutions to what he now calls a “climate crisis” were discussed at the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit on Monday. He noted the need for world leaders to “scale up” the solutions to “keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees and reach carbon neutrality by 2050.” 

Guterres has called for the phasing out of fossil fuels and an end to construction of new coal power plants. He has also said it is time to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and shift taxes from salaries to carbon – taxing pollution, not people.

Guterres was the first in a series of world leaders involved in some of the most high profile geopolitical issues to speak on the first day of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Also speaking was Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who accused the media of falsely reporting the Amazon rainforest was being destroyed by fires.

“The Amazon is not being devastated or consumed by fire,” Bolsonaro said. “The media is lying.”

Bolsonaro’s remarks came a week after a Human Rights Watch report accused him of allowing illegal logging in the Amazon and failing to protect defenders of the world’s largest rainforest.

Bolsonaro said many fires in the Amazon occurred naturally during dry weather, although he admitted some were set deliberately.