UN chief calls for Security Council reform

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses the 78th Session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, US, September 19, 2023. (Reuters)
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Updated 19 September 2023
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UN chief calls for Security Council reform

  • Antonio Guterres: ‘The world has changed. Our institutions have not’
  • Secretary-general highlights crises in Libya, Sudan, Palestine, Syria

NEW YORK: The UN Security Council must be reformed to meet the demands of the modern world amid an “unhinging” of the global system, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

He began his speech by highlighting the tragedy in Libya, where thousands have died as a result of flooding.

Those living in the coastal city of Derna and surrounding areas were “victims many times over,” Guterres said.

They were “victims of years of conflict, victims of climate chaos and victims of leaders near and far.”

Derna is a “sad snapshot of the state of our world — the flood of inequity, of injustice, of inability to confront the challenges in our midst,” Guterres said.

And amid a world that is “becoming unhinged,” where “geopolitical tensions are rising” and “global challenges are mounting,” it is “high time to renew multilateral institutions based on 21st-century political and economic realities.”

He noted the transition of the global system toward multipolarity — where different power centers maintain influence — but warned that the new reality requires “strong and effective multilateral institutions” to operate peacefully and effectively.

Guterres described the UN as reflecting the world of 1945, “when many countries in this Assembly Hall were still under colonial domination.”

He added: “The world has changed. Our institutions have not. We cannot effectively address problems as they are if institutions don’t reflect the world as it is.”

As a result of the outdated system, “divides are deepening,” Guterres warned, highlighting “divides among economic and military powers,” and “divides between north and south, east and west.”

The world is “inching ever closer to a great fracture in economic and financial systems and trade relations, one that threatens a single, open internet, with diverging strategies on technology and artificial intelligence, and potentially clashing security frameworks.”

Guterres called for the UNSC and global financial system to be reformed in line with the demands of the modern world. But reforms are “a question of power,” he said. “I have no illusions.”

Statesmanship should serve as the target instead of gamesmanship and gridlock, he said, adding: “It is time for a global compromise. Politics is compromise. Diplomacy is compromise. Effective leadership is compromise.”

Guterres also noted crises affecting the Arab world and Africa, including in the Sahel, where a “series of coups is further destabilizing the region as terrorism is gaining ground.”

He added: “Sudan is descending into full-scale civil war; millions have fled and the country risks splitting apart.”

And the “escalating violence and bloodshed” in Palestine is “taking a terrible toll on civilians,” he said, adding that the two-state solution is “the only pathway to lasting peace and security.”

Syria, meanwhile, “remains in ruins while peace remains remote,” said Guterres, who concluded by calling for climate action, noting that COP28, hosted by the UAE, is “around the corner.”

He added: “To all those working, marching and championing real climate action, I want you to know you are on the right side of history. I’m with you. I won’t give up this fight of our lives.”


Following Kashmir attack, Modi cuts short Saudi trip after talks on energy, defense

Updated 9 sec ago
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Following Kashmir attack, Modi cuts short Saudi trip after talks on energy, defense

  • Saudi Arabia is one of the top exporters of petroleum to India
  • Modi met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before cutting short his visit 

DUBAI: Saudi Arabia and India agreed to boost cooperation in supplies of crude and liquefied petroleum gas, according to a joint statement reported by the Saudi state news agency on Wednesday following a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which was cut short by a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. 

Saudi Arabia is one of the top exporters of petroleum to India. 

Modi met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before cutting short his visit and returning to New Delhi after an attack on India's Jammu and Kashmir territory which killed 26 people, the worst attack in India since the 2008 Mumbai shootings. 

The two countries also agreed to deepen their defense ties and improve their cooperation in defence manufacturing, along with agreements in agriculture and food security.

"The two countries welcomed the excellent cooperation between the two sides in counter-terrorism and terror financing," the joint statement said.


Denmark’s King Frederik to visit Greenland, daily Sermitsiaq reports

Updated 36 min 50 sec ago
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Denmark’s King Frederik to visit Greenland, daily Sermitsiaq reports

  • The visit to Greenland by Denmark’s head of state comes as US President Donald Trump seeks a takeover

COPENHAGEN: Denmark’s King Frederik will travel to Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, on April 28, Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq reported on Wednesday, citing the island’s own government.
The visit to Greenland by Denmark’s head of state comes as US President Donald Trump seeks a takeover by the United States of the minerals-rich and strategically important island.
Denmark has rejected Trump’s ambition and says only Greenlanders themselves can decide the territory’s future.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens Frederik-Nielsen will travel to Denmark on April 26, where he will meet with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, according to Sermitsiaq.
The king will travel to Greenland together with Nielsen when the prime minister returns to the island, according to the report.


Chechnya leader’s son, 17, becomes head of Chechen security council

Updated 23 April 2025
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Chechnya leader’s son, 17, becomes head of Chechen security council

  • It is the fourth time Adam Kadyrov has been appointed to an official position since 2023, when he was 15
  • He already serves as his father’s top bodyguard

The teenage son of Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region and close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has been appointed secretary of the region’s security council, according to the council’s Telegram channel.
Adam Kadyrov turned 17 in November 2024. It is the fourth time he has been appointed to an official position since 2023, when he was 15.
He already serves as his father’s top bodyguard, a trustee of Chechnya’s Special Forces University, and an observer in a new army battalion.
Ramzan Kadyrov has led Chechnya, a mountainous Muslim region in southern Russia that tried to break away from Moscow in wars that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, since 2007.
He enjoys wide leeway from Putin to run Chechnya as his personal fiefdom in return for ensuring the stability of the region, where an Islamist, anti-Russian insurgency continued for around a decade after the end of full-scale conflict there in the early 2000s.
His rise to power came after his own father, Akhmat, was killed in a 2004 bombing by insurgents who saw him as a turncoat.
In September 2023, Adam Kadyrov was shown, in a video posted by his father on social media, beating a detainee accused of burning the Qur'an. Ramzan Kadyrov said he was proud of his son for defending his Muslim religion.
The detainee, Nikita Zhuravel, has since been sentenced to three and a half years in prison.


Russian drone strike on bus kills 9 in Ukrainian city of Marhanets, Kyiv says

Updated 23 April 2025
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Russian drone strike on bus kills 9 in Ukrainian city of Marhanets, Kyiv says

  • Zelensky said the Russian strike hit a bus that was transporting workers of a mining and processing plant
  • “An ordinary bus. Clearly a civilian object, a civilian target,” Zelensky said

KYIV: A Russian drone hit a bus carrying workers in the Ukrainian city of Marhanets on Wednesday, killing nine people and injuring close to 50, Kyiv officials said, in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky said was a “deliberate war crime.”
Zelensky said the Russian strike hit a bus that was transporting workers of a mining and processing plant.
“An ordinary bus. Clearly a civilian object, a civilian target,” Zelensky said on X.
“It was an egregiously brutal attack – and an absolutely deliberate war crime,” he added, calling for “an immediate, full, and unconditional ceasefire.”
Russia fired a total of 134 attack drones at targets in Ukraine overnight, Kyiv’s air force said. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Ukrainian officials arrived in London on Wednesday, even as most other big power foreign ministers pulled out, to hold talks about ways to achieve a ceasefire as a first step toward peace.
Marhanets, in south-central Ukraine, lies on the Ukrainian-controlled north bank of the Dnipro river’s dried-up reservoir that separates the warring sides.
Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak said nine people were killed in the attack and 49 were injured.
Zelensky shared photographs of the aftermath of the attack on X, showing bodies lying in and next to the bus and being carried away by emergency workers.
Zelensky added most of the injured were women.
Elsewhere, an energy plant that provides electricity to the city of Kherson near southern front lines was destroyed in an artillery and drone attack, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Ukraine’s emergency service also reported a drone strike on the Synelnykivskyi district in the Dnipropetrovsk region that injured two people and sparked a fire at an agricultural enterprise.
Russia further fired drones into the central region of Poltava, injuring at least six people, its governor said.
A drone attack on civilian infrastructure in the suburbs of the Black Sea port city of Odesa injured two people and sparked several fires, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
Russian drone salvoes also set off large-scale fires in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, in the northeast, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram.
Seven private houses, a storage building and an outbuilding were also damaged by drones hitting the Kyiv capital region, where a fire also broke out in a restaurant complex, its regional governor said.
Both Russia and Ukraine are under pressure from the United States to demonstrate progress toward ending the war that began with Russia’s 2022 full-blown invasion amid warnings that US President Donald Trump could walk away from peacemaking.


India warns of ‘loud and clear’ response after deadly Kashmir attack

Indian soldiers are on guard in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, April 23, 2025. (AP)
Updated 15 min 12 sec ago
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India warns of ‘loud and clear’ response after deadly Kashmir attack

  • Gunmen kill 26 men in the popular tourist resort of Pahalgam
  • Kashmir Valley shuts down in response to region’s deadliest attack in years

NEW DELHI: India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh vowed on Wednesday to pursue those who planned and carried out a deadly attack in Jammu and Kashmir, where gunmen opened fire on visitors at a popular Himalayan tourist hotspot.

The attackers killed 26 people, all men, and left many critically injured at a site near the resort town of Pahalgam. It was the deadliest such incident in years, shattering the relative calm in the disputed Indian-controlled region.

“We will not only reach the perpetrators of this act but also the actors behind the scenes,” Singh said in a press briefing in New Delhi. “The responsible will soon see a loud and clear response.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to New Delhi on Wednesday morning in the aftermath of the attack, which took place as US Vice President J.D. Vance is visiting India.

The assault is seen as a setback to the peace and stability that Modi’s government has touted as a key achievement of revoking Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status in 2019.

“It is a big setback because they claimed that everything is normal in Kashmir,” Showkat Hussain, former dean of the School of Legal Studies at the Central University of Kashmir, told Arab News.

“They have been portraying to the whole world that we have managed to (cut) the resistance in Kashmir, and it seems that that mirage has dissipated because of this attack. Kashmir is as volatile as it used to be before 2019.”

The Kashmir Valley shut down on Wednesday following a call by the local ruling party, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference.

Several newspapers across the region printed black front pages as a gesture of mourning, people across the valley held vigils to protest the violence, while government employees observed two minutes of silence in respect for those killed in Pahalgam.

“And a sense of insecurity has spread all across Jammu and Kashmir,” Hussain said.

The region is part of the larger Kashmiri territory, which has been the subject of international dispute since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Both countries claim Kashmir in full, and rule in part.

Indian-administered Kashmir has for decades witnessed outbreaks of separatist insurgency to resist control from the government in New Delhi.

According to Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak, a retired officer of the Indian Air Force, the Pahalgam attack was not, however, an indication of insurgency being on the rise after decades of lull but rather that the forced scrapping of the Muslim-majority region’s constitutional autonomy has not brought what the Indian government has been referring to as “normalcy.”

It was a message by the perpetrators and “some elements on the ground in the valley,” he said, that “Kashmir is not normal, and those elements have a role. They may lie low, they may come up ... and that’s what they’ve done.”

Attacks such as the Pahalgam shooting have over decades strained ties between India and Pakistan. In 2019, a suicide bombing in Kashmir’s Pulwama district killed 40 Indian paramilitary personnel and triggered cross-border air strikes, pushing the nuclear-armed neighbors to the brink of war.

Pakistan’s foreign office said in a statement that it was “concerned” about the attack and extended condolences to the victims’ relatives.