May urges UN reform, threatens to withhold UK funding
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has threatened to withhold one-third of her country’s annual funding for the United Nations if the world body fails to “win our trust.”
Speaking to delegates at the 72nd UN General Assembly on Wednesday, May said Wednesday that her country was ready to make at least 30 percent of its “generous” £90 million annual core funding for the UN's agencies conditional.
“The UN and its agencies must win our trust in proving to us and to the people we represent that they can deliver,” she said. “And that is why we will remain generous in our funding but set aside 30% to be paid only to those parts of the UN that achieve sufficient results.”
The reforms were not just “technical,” May argued, adding that the UN should undergo change in a way that it can “truly respond to the global challenges of the 21st century.”
The British PM complained that the international body had failed in practice to implement a series of “global compacts” that were agreed in the past for solving world crises.
We “need to strive harder than ever to show that institutions like this United Nations can work for the countries that formed them, and for the people who we represent,” said May.
Echoing Trump
May’s comments echoed similar statements by US President Donald Trump, who said earlier this week that bureaucracy and mismanagement were keeping the UN from living up to its potential.
He said during a meeting with UN Secretary General António Guterres on Monday that he wonders if “there was a conspiracy” to make UN ineffective.
"Someone out to undermine the UN could not have come up with a better way to do it than by imposing some of the rules we have created ourselves," he said.
"I even sometimes ask myself whether there was a conspiracy to make our rules exactly what they need to be for us not to be effective," he added.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump, whose country funds 22 percent of the UN's regular budget and 28 percent of its peacekeeping missions, had blasted the UN for its "utter weakness and incompetence."
Rwandans say UK deportation 'another brutal manifestation of neo-colonialism'
UK's Sunak vows to start migrant flights to Rwanda
The struggles of Occupied Palestine
VIDEO | Press TV's news headlines
VIDEO | American, Israeli rabbis call for ceasefire during protest near Gaza
Minister urges enhanced Iran-Russia defense cooperation
US campus crackdown: 500 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested
VIDEO | Yemenis rally in Sana'a in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza
VIDEO | Jordanians march after Friday prayers in support of Palestinians
Far-right Israeli minister Ben-Gvir injured
Germany clears pro-Gaza camp as US-style demos spread across Europe
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website
