KUALA LUMPUR: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took a swipe Saturday at the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, saying they “stopped working” and failed to protect Gaza’s war victims.
Lula was speaking after meeting Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, ahead of a major regional summit where the Brazilian leader would likely meet US President Donald Trump.
“Who can accept the genocide that has been going on in the Gaza Strip for so long?” Lula told reporters after the bilateral meeting to deepen ties between the two nations.
“The multilateral institutions that were created to try to prevent these things from happening have stopped working. Today, the UN Security Council and the UN no longer function,” Lula said.
Lula also appeared to take a swipe at Trump, saying “for a leader, walking with their head held high is more important than a Nobel Prize.”
Trump departed Washington Friday for Asia and high-stakes talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday, the last day of his trip.
But first, the US president is expected to witness the signing of a peace deal between Thailand and Cambodia on Sunday, which he – in part – helped to broker.
The White House lashed out this month at the Norwegian Nobel Committee after it awarded the peace prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and overlooked Trump.
Since returning to the White House for his second term in January, Trump had repeatedly insisted that he deserved the Nobel for his role in resolving numerous conflicts – a claim observers say is broadly exaggerated.
Meanwhile, Trump and Lula have begun to patch up their differences after months of bad blood over the trial and conviction of Trump’s ally, the far-right former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump has instituted a 50-percent tariff on many Brazilian products and imposed sanctions on several top officials, including a top Supreme Court judge, to punish Brazil for what he termed a “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.
Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced Bolsonaro in September to 27 years in prison for his role in a botched coup bid after his 2022 election loss to Lula.
But relations between Trump and Lula began to thaw when the two 79-year-old leaders had a brief meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September.
They then spoke by phone on October 6 and first raised the possibility of meeting at the ASEAN summit.
Brazil’s Lula: UN, other multilateral institutions have ‘stopped working’
https://arab.news/w32hg
Brazil’s Lula: UN, other multilateral institutions have ‘stopped working’
- Brazilian leader: ‘Today, the UN Security Council and the UN no longer function’
- ‘Who can accept the genocide that has been going on in the Gaza Strip for so long?’
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
