OTTAWA: Canada plans to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday, a dramatic policy shift he said was necessary to preserve hopes of a two-state solution.
“Canada intends to recognize the State of Palestine at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025,” Carney said.
With Wednesday’s announcement, Carney positioned Canada alongside France, after President Emmanuel Macron said his country would formally recognize a Palestinian state during the UN meeting, the most powerful European nation to announce such a move.
Macron’s announcement drew condemnation from Israel, which said the move “rewards terror,” while US President Donald Trump dismissed the decision as pointless.
Carney said his decision was informed by Canada’s “long-standing” belief in a two-state solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“That possibility of a two-state solution is being eroded before our eyes,” the prime minister told reporters in Ottawa.
He referenced Israel’s “ongoing failure” to prevent humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza amid its war against Hamas, as well the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
“For decades, it was hoped that would be achieved as part of a peace process built around a negotiated settlement between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority,” he said.
“Regrettably, this approach is no longer tenable.”
Canada intends to recognize Palestinian state at UN General Assembly: Carney
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Canada intends to recognize Palestinian state at UN General Assembly: Carney
- Carney positioned Canada alongside France, UK
Poland slow to counter Russia’s ‘existential threat’: general
- The general highlighted a low “pace of technical modernization,” compared to increases in the army’s size
- Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039
WARSAW: Russia poses an “existential threat” to Poland and its military is lagging, the country’s armed forces chief warned senior officials on Wednesday.
Poland, the largest country on NATO’s eastern flank and a neighbor of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, is the western alliance’s largest spender in relative terms.
This year, the country is allocating 4.8 percent of its GDP to defense, just shy of the alliance’s five percent target to be met by 2035.
However, that record defense spending was not enough to “make up for nearly three decades of chronic underfunding of the armed forces,” General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the general staff, argued at the meeting, which included top officers, the defense minister and Poland’s president.
The general highlighted a low “pace of technical modernization,” compared to increases in the army’s size.
Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039, compared with around 210,000 at present.
As a result of a lack of updates, some new Polish units “are not achieving combat readiness,” due to insufficient equipment, rather than a personnel shortage, the general argued.
Meanwhile, he added, “the Russian Federation remains an existential threat to Poland.”
Russia “is constantly reorganizing its forces, drawing on the lessons from its aggression in Ukraine, and building up the capacity for a conventional conflict with NATO countries,” he stressed.
Poland is to receive 43.7 billion euros ($51,5 billion) in loans under the European Union’s Security Action For Europe (SAFE) scheme, designed to strengthen Europe’s defensive capabilities.
Warsaw plans to use these funds to boost domestic arms production.
The Polish government claims that Poland will be able to access SAFE finance even if President Karol Nawrocki — backed by Poland’s conservative-nationalist opposition — vetos a law setting out domestic arrangements for its implementation.
Law and Justice (PiS) — the main opposition party — argues that SAFE could become a new tool for Brussels to place undue pressure on Poland, thanks to a planned mechanism for monitoring the funds, which they claim risks undermining Polish sovereignty.
