UN:THE GLOBAL financial crisis dominated the opening day of the UN's annual general assembly debate yesterday, with several leaders including US president George Bush and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy calling for action in their speeches to the assembly.
The turmoil just a few miles away on Wall Street overshadowed what was Mr Bush's eighth and final appearance at UN headquarters as US president. With his administration working to persuade Congress to back an unprecedented $700 billion rescue plan, Mr Bush warned in his valedictory speech to the assembly that failure to act in the face of such financial upheaval would be "devastating."
In a bid to reassure world leaders, the US president said he is confident that Congress will move in the "urgent timeframe required" to prevent the crisis widening. "Our economies are more closely connected than ever before and I know that many of you here are watching how the United States government will address the problems in our financial system," Mr Bush said.
Speaking just after the US president, Mr Sarkozy urged a complete overhaul of the global financial system, and called for major economic players to meet before the end of the year to examine the lessons of a crisis he described as the most serious the world has experienced since the 1930s.
"Let us rebuild a system where banks will do their job, and the job of banks is to finance economic development. It is not to fuel speculation," the French president said, adding: "Let us build together a regular, regulated capitalism."
In his opening address to the assembly, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon warned that the turbulence in global markets risks seriously hampering efforts to reduce world poverty, and shows that a new approach is needed, one in which there is less "uncritical faith in the 'magic' of markets".
"The global financial crisis endangers all our work - financing for development, social spending in rich nations and poor, the Millennium Development Goals," he told presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers from the UN's 192 member states.
Mr Ban said: "We need a new understanding on business ethics and governance, with more compassion . . . we must think about how the world economic system should evolve to more fully reflect changing realities of our time."
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the first head of state to address the assembly yesterday, called for "vigorous" action to stem the current crisis and railed at speculators whom he said were to blame for the "anguish of entire peoples".
Mr Bush used his address to the UN to reprise familiar themes including the need to combat terrorism and stop the spread of nuclear weapons. He accused Syria and Iran of supporting terrorism and called on the UN to impose sanctions on Tehran and North Korea. He also had harsh words for Moscow over its invasion of Georgia last month.
"The United Nations charter sets forth the equal rights of nations large and small. Russia's invasion of Georgia was a violation of those words," he said.
After a history of strained relations with the UN, Mr Bush paid lip service to the body in his farewell address, saying it could be "a powerful force for good".
"In the 21st century the world needs a confident and effective United Nations," he said, adding that it and other multilateral organisations were "needed more urgently than ever". But he chided the body for corruption and accused it of being passive in the face of human rights violations.
Ahmadinejad rails against US, Israel
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his speech last night to the general assembly said that some "bullying" powers were trying to thwart Iran's peaceful nuclear ambitions but Tehran would resist and defend its right to nuclear power.
He railed against the US and other powers he said were being manipulated by Zionists. He also reiterated that Tehran's nuclear ambitions were purely peaceful. Mr Ahmadinejad, who has said in the past Israel should be wiped off the map, said there was growing resistance in the world to the aggression and acquisitiveness of "bullying powers", a phrase he used repeatedly to refer to the US and its allies.
"Today, the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters," he said, referring to Israel. - (Reuters)