Donald Trump’s maiden speech to the UN will see him urging nations to turn up the pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
Senior White House officials said he would also target Iran’s nuclear program, single out Venezuela for criticism and refer to Islamist militants as ‘losers.’
Trump’s 10:30am speech will mark his latest attempt to lay out his ‘America First’ vision for a US foreign policy aimed at downgrading global bureaucracies, basing alliances on shared interests, and steering the US away from nation-building.
Donald Trump will speak to the UN for the first time on Tuesday morning, calling for leaders to unite against North Korea’s nuclear aims and Iran’s own nuclear development
The UN has placed multiple sanctions on North Korea; Kim Jong-Un’s state media say that any more sanctions will only increase the rate of its nuclear development program
A senior White House official, briefing reporters on the contents of the speech, said Trump would single out North Korea for ‘destabilizing, hostile and dangerous behavior.’
In his speech, he will seek to rally the world to help America and its Asian allies reduce North Korea to pariah status and pressure Iran to rein in everything from ballistic missile launches to interference in Syria.
The US ambassador to the United States, Nikki Haley, says that most non-military options for dealing with the North Korea’s escalating nuclear threats have all but been exhausted.
The UN Security Council has already imposed several rounds of sanctions on North Korea.
North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, said on Monday that the more sanctions that Washington and its allies imposed on Pyongyang, the faster it would move to complete its nuclear plans.
Trump will also voice concern about Iran, which aides say he considers in violation of the spirit of a 2015 deal negotiated by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, and aimed at containing Iran’s nuclear program.
‘Theirs is a shared menace and nations cannot be bystanders to history and if we don’t confront the threats now, they will only gather force and become more formidable,’ the official said of North Korea and Iran.
Trump will also express concerns over Iran, which is coming up for nuclear re-certification in October. Here Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani meers UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
Trump has set US-Iran relations on a far more confrontational path than the detente Iranian President Hassan Rouhani enjoyed with Obama.
His rhetoric against Iran, coming as he appears to be leaning against re-certifying the nuclear deal by a mid-October deadline, prompted a retort from Rouhani on Monday.
Rouhani told CNN that exiting the Iran nuclear deal ‘would carry a high cost for the United States of America, and I do not believe Americans would be willing to pay such a high cost for something that will be useless for them.’
Trump is also using his four days in New York to voice his concern about Venezuela, telling Latin American leaders on Monday night the United States would take additional steps if Caracas moved toward authoritarian rule.
North Korea and Iran have been the focus of Trump’s talks with other world leaders.
Even so, he has found time to criticize the UN itself, alleging gross mismanagement and demanding that the US – its largest donor – get more for its investment.
Trump has never spoken before the UN; his maiden remarks come after he criticized it for its bureaucracy and being a poor return on US investment