US
President Barrack Obama has affirmed his country’s commitment to a
coalition it is leading against the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant
(ISIL) group, calling on leaders of the world, especially the Middle
East to stand against ideologies of “extremism and sectarianism”.
“Ultimately,
the task of rejecting sectarianism and extremism is a generational
task, a task for the people of the Middle East themselves,” Obama said.
“No external power can bring about a transformation of hearts and
minds.”
The speech,
while touched upon a chain of crisis facing the international community,
including the return of Cold War spectres amidst the armed conflict
between Russia and Ukraine, the outbreak of deadly Ebola virus and
climate change, Obama’s focus on the ISIL sets the stage for a Security
Council meeting later in the day.
Due to be
presided by him, members of the council are expected to adopt a
resolution that would require all countries to prevent the recruitment
and transport of foreign fighters preparing to join groups such as ISIL,
which he described as the “network of death,” and al-Qaeda-affiliated
al-Nusra Front.
The fall of
large areas in north Iraq and Syria to ISIL forced the US, along with
Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar to launch
air strikes against the group’s fighters in Syria and Iraq.
The first
air strikes in Syria were delivered Monday night, following four years
of reluctance on whether to militarily intervene in a country where a
bloody civil war has killed over 190,000 people and displaced about 2.5
million citizens, as troops of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad brutally
clampdown on rebels who sought his ouster.
The UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world seem like it may be falling
apart, as the international community faces unprecedented list of
crisis.
Painting a grim picture of what lays ahead, Ban said “unspeakable acts and the deaths of innocents.”
“But
leadership is precisely about finding the seeds of hope and nurturing
them into something bigger,” Ban said. “That is our duty. That is my
call to you today.”
Al Jazeera’s
diplomatic editor, James Bays said “I have spoken to so many world
diplomats and senior officials over the past few days, they say they’ve
never known a year like this in terms of the number of crisis.”
“You wonder
if some of these very important topics will be properly dealt with. I
don’t think they will get the attention they deserve,” Al Jazeera’s Bays
said from New York, citing Obama’s focus on ISIL which has pushed at
least 80,000 Syrian Kurds into Turkey over the past few days, to escape
the violence.
“The big
focus was ISIL, and what to do, without any detail on military actions,
which is exactly what a lot of people in the hall will be thinking
about: the legality of those airstrikes, as some countries these actions
to be illegal according to the UN charter,” Bays explained, noting that
eyes will be on the reactions of China and Russia, allies of Al-Assad
who have been quiet with regards to these reactions.
Carne
Ross, executive director of Independent Diplomat, a non-profit advisory
group, told Al Jazeera that an element worth noting on the General
Assembly’s agenda is climate change.
“Climate
change is on the agenda of the General Assembly for the first time ever,
which is surely a very welcomed thing. The summit yesterday, which
preceded the General Assembly, was quite a positive step forward towards
a global deal in Paris next year,” Ross said.
Thousands of
protesters took to the streets in more than 100 cities on September
21, to sound the “climate alarm” ahead of meeting.
Among the
topics also touched upon by Obama was the Ukrainian crises, where a
ceasefire agreement between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces
in the east remains shaky and repeatedly broken. Obama, who accuses
Moscow of backing separatism in Ukraine, said: “We will impose a cost on
Russia for aggression, and counter falsehoods with the truth.”
Obama also
called upon Tehran to grasp the the “historic opportunity” of a nuclear
deal reached last year to curtail the republic’s nuclear programme. “My
message to Iran’s leaders and people is simple: do not let this
opportunity pass. We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs
while assuring the world that your programme is peaceful,” he said.
