U.S. Politics

Secretary of State Clinton responds during a question-and-answer session at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, after speaking about the Obama Administration's agenda for the upcoming United Nations General Assembly.

Secretary Clinton Outlines U.S. Agenda for U.N. General Assembly

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.
Staff Writer
September 18, 2009

Washington — The United States will promote an agenda at the opening of the 64th session of the U.N. General Assembly focused heavily on building international partnerships, promoting nuclear nonproliferation, resolving issues in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and forging economic development initiatives.

“By building and strengthening partnerships, institutions and international regimes, we can forge a global consensus and use that leverage to offer clear incentives to all nations to cooperate and live up to their responsibilities, and we can also devise strong disincentives for those who would act in isolation or provoke conflict,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience at the Brookings Institution on September 18. She laid out a U.S. agenda that seeks to build on multilateral efforts first launched by President Obama and to quash criticism that the United States had too often chosen to act unilaterally in recent years.

Clinton said the Obama administration has launched “efforts to advance our interests and solve today’s problems through a global architecture of cooperation and partnership.”

No issue poses a greater threat to the security of the United States and the world than the spread of nuclear weapons and the means to make nuclear bombs, she said. In an April speech in Prague, Obama outlined an aggressive plan to move toward a nuclear-free world. (See “Obama Seeks World Free of Nuclear Weapons.”)

Obama will lead a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on nonproliferation and disarmament. He will emphasize the importance of strengthening the international nuclear nonproliferation regime and the role of the Security Council in enforcing compliance, Clinton said. Bringing nations into compliance includes North Korea and Iran, she said.

“Iran’s continued failure to live up to its obligations carries profound consequences for the security of the United States and our allies, our progress on global nonproliferation and progress toward disarmament,” she said.

“Our concern is not Iran’s right to develop peaceful nuclear energy, but its responsibility to demonstrate that its program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes,” she added.

The U.S. offer to engage with Iran is still on the table, Clinton said, but unless Iran complies with international demands it may face more sanctions and isolation from the international community.

During the week in New York for the opening of the General Assembly, September 22–25, Clinton said, she will meet with foreign ministers from Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany to discuss how to move forward and prepare for talks with Iranian officials on October 1 in Turkey. (See “Iranian Negotiator Agrees to October 1 Talks with Six Powers.”)

The six nations have been working to convince Iranian officials to halt development of a nuclear weapons program in return for a package of political and economic incentives. Iranian officials have rejected the offers and have refused to suspend uranium enrichment activities, a condition for receiving the incentives and eventually the lifting of sanctions.

“We are serious. And we will soon see if the Iranians are serious,” Clinton said.

DEVELOPMENT AND WOMEN

Clinton said that during the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in New York she will outline how the United States will approach economic development in tandem with diplomacy, coupling the work of the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

“The foundation for our approach will be principles that will move us away from top-down assistance that too often fails to meet the needs of those we are attempting to help or has only short-term effects,” Clinton said.

“To solve the complex problems of poverty, hunger, health, climate change, where they intersect, we want to focus on those root causes and look for approaches that really change, transform the environment in which people are making these decisions, and in which governments are held accountable to a higher degree of performance and transparency.”

Clinton said she will personally work to advance international efforts to recognize women as drivers of economic progress and social stability, and she will address impediments to women’s empowerment and advancement, especially sexual and gender-based violence. During a recent trip to sub-Saharan Africa, Clinton emphasized efforts to curb gender-based violence as essential to strengthening African societies. (See “No Excuses for Gender-Based Violence, Clinton Tells DRC.”)

“I will chair a session of the Security Council and will speak on behalf of the adoption of a resolution on women, peace and security,” she said.