US is behind global body '100%': Trump tells UN chief Guterres

United Nations, Sep 23 (PTI) In his first meeting with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres after beginning his second term as US president in January, Donald Trump on Tuesday said, “Our country is behind the United Nations 100 per cent.” After lashing out at the UN in his address to the General Assembly, Trump said he supports the world organisation even though he may disagree with it at times.

“I think the potential of the United Nations is incredible, really incredible. It can do so much. So I'm behind it. I may disagree with it sometimes, but I am so behind it, because I think that the potential for peace with this institution is so great,” Trump told Guterres.

“Thank you very much. It's always an honour to be here. We've done this before, and this was a little more exciting because of the escalator and the teleprompter. These things happen,” Trump said in his bilateral meeting with Guterres.

Earlier, Trump addressed world leaders from the iconic UNGA podium at the General Debate of the 80th high-level session of the UN General Assembly, his first address at the UN in the second term of his presidency.

Trump, who had begun his address by criticising that the teleprompter at the UNGA hall was not working, said, “All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up, stopped right in the middle. If the First Lady wasn't in great shape, she would have fallen, but she's in great shape. We're both in good shape,” Trump said amid laughter from the world leaders.

“And then a teleprompter that didn't work. These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much,” Trump said.

The UN chief, in his opening remarks ahead of the bilateral meeting with Trump, said the United States was absolutely essential in the founding of the organisation.

“I believe there are many areas where we can cooperate in a positive way, and I would think that the most important is peace. You have selected peace as a central objective of your mandate,” Guterres said to Trump, to which the US president responded “true”.

Guterres said that Trump has been going “north and south, east and west, in all possible situations, getting or trying to get ceasefires, alleviating tensions, making peace agreements”.

“And I want to reassure you that the United Nations, from me to our teams on the ground, to our mission, we are entirely at your disposal to be able to work together for just peace in the world,” he added.

The UN chief also expressed gratitude to the US for its major political and financial support.

“And one thing is, for me, extremely important is that the suffering, the horrible suffering, of millions of people can be stopped,” Guterres said.

In his UNGA address, Trump claimed that he had stopped seven wars in his second term in the White House, including the one between India and Pakistan, and blasted the UN for its failure to offer any help in ending these raging conflicts.

“In a period of just seven months, I have ended seven 'unendable' wars. They said they were 'unendable, you are never going to get them solved’,” Trump said, adding that some of the wars he helped end were going on for decades.

“I ended seven wars and in all cases they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda - a vicious, violent war that was, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia and Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Trump said.

“No president or prime minister, and for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that. And I did it in just seven months. It's never happened before,” Trump said.

“It's too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them,” the US president said.

In his speech, Trump added that he didn’t think about it at the time because he was “too busy” working to save millions of lives and stopping these wars.

“But later I realised that the United Nations wasn't there for us. They weren't there.” “That being the case, what is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has such tremendous potential. I've always said it, it has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it's not even coming close to living up to that potential for the most part,” Trump said.

“At least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It's empty words, and empty words don't solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action,” he added. PTI YAS GSP GSP