Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. We have an important conversation to bring you now as we work our way up to Anger Week in New York. My colleague David Gura, the host of The Big Take podcast here on Bloomberg sits down with Antonio good Terras, the United Nations Secretary General, and a conversation you'll only hear right here on Bloomberg TV and Radio.
David Joe, thank you very much, mister Secretary General. Thank you very much for the time so good.
It's pleasure to welcome for you.
I want to start with the relationship between the United States and the United Nations. This is a time when it's being called into question. The funding commitment is being called into question. So a basic question to start, can the UN continue to exist without US financial support?
Well, first of all, it's important to say that the US was essential in the phoning of the DUN and it was the most important partner of DUN for most of all life. And it's still an extremely important partner. And I'm very grateful for all the UN has done to the US. At the present moment, as you said, we are having some massive cuts. The agencies have responded in humanitarian aid and the Development Corporation, which means that
they reduce stuff, they shrunk their operations. So the UN moves on, but of course the people impacted by the cuts suffer, which means less food distributed, less vaccines distributed, less HIVH treatment distributed. So obviously the impact is not in the UN. The impact is in those that benefit
from the action of our humanitarian development agencies. On the other hand, we have the assessed contributions, which means the mandatory contributions that would reread by member states for the Secretariat and for the peacekeeping operations, and there are cuts announced and cuts that probably will take place in the future.
We have been doing enough measures in the implementation of the year's budget to be able to move ahead, and we are preparing, if necessary, a series of emergency measures to drastically reduce our peace keeping operations, which again is not a problem for the UN. We shrink, we shrink, we reduce what we are doing. The problem is that those peace keepers, that many of them are in places where there's no piece to keep with terrorist groups, with
armed groups. They are sometimes the last resort for the protection of civilians, and those are the ones that will suffer. So the UN can move on, but the people that we support will suffer as.
The UN, as the US rather steps back or takes on this different role. Are there member states who are doing more? I think of China and the work that you've done to get China to participate more in this body. Are they picking up the slack or are they doing more now?
The contributions of China have not changed, and China is not going to pay for what the UN doesn't pay. What is clear for me is we are moving into a multi polar world and that is the reality. People usually talk about US and China, But I look at India, I look at Indonesia, and look at the Vietnam, I look at Brazil. Every single day, these emerging economies represent a larger share in the global wealth.
Every single day.
They have more influence, and we need to adapt our institutions.
We need to adapt.
The UN, the Security Council, we need to adapt the Bereton Wood's institutions. We need to adapt all the governance mechodis that exist in the world to that reality. This is no longer a multipower world, This is no longer this is no longer a bipolar This is no longer a unipolar world.
This is at the present.
Moment a chaotic world, but moving into a multipolar world. And we need to build the multilateral institutions of the future. That's why we are informing the UN And let's not forget there was multipolarity in Europe before the First World War. In the absence of multilateral institutions.
The result was war.
It's the era of a liberal international order over No.
No, I believe that.
If we manage this multipolarity in a way in which we bring the emerging economies to fully participate in the present bodies, we can preserve the rule of law, we can preserve international law in general, and we can preserve the nature of our institutions. But the question some people think that the Chinese are trying to build a parallel system or games. Now I mean the Chinese, the Indians, the Indonesians. They want to participate in the present system.
They want to have their fair share in the present system. And I think it's important to look into all of them, not only to look into an specific country, because the world is changing everywhere.
Are you going to meet with President Trump when he comes here at next week, and what do you expect that meeting to be like? He has had plenty of criticisms about this institution and the way it operates.
Well.
I hope that this will be a good opportunity to strengthen the cooperation between the US and the UN. I mean, the relationship between the US and the u N has always been a fundamental period of international relations, and I hope that it would be possible to work in that they're Should.
We read anything into the fact that there are world leaders who didn't get visas to come here this year?
What does that say about that relationship?
This is the violation of the past country agreement. This is, in my opinion, unacceptable, and I think it's a mistake because it's better to have everybody here than to let people out when dead people are directly involved in the possible solution of the problems.
That's who you are having.
You used to be the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and a meeting that the US is going to hold next week centers on putting new restrictions or limitations on asylum.
How do you.
Interpret that effort here to use the UN this forum to advocate for something that seems so antithetical or not in keeping with what the UN's perspective has been for someone.
This is a UN convention, the fifture and convention.
That I believe is one of the most fantastic instruments of human rights that was ever created. So it's logic that those that want to change the convention do it. In the UN, I was a commissioner for Refugees for ten years. It was the most exciting work of my life where I felt I could really do something directly in the most remote locations where people were suffering in.
A terrible way, and I could take decisions to change their lives.
So that was a fantastic job, and I considered the protection of refugees something fundamental and I am completely against the idea that we should build a different convention. I think the fifty one Convention is one of the most important instruments of human rights in the world.
There is a frustration about the way this institution operates, and when I think of the conflict in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, the Security Council at this moment in time is deadlocked. There is vehement disagreement among many of the prominent members of that body. How does the broader institution continue to operate when you have that part of this unable to do its job effectively.
D N is much more than the scur Council.
I mean, we are by far the main distributors mitarian aid in the world. We are in the front line of climate tection. I mean, I believe it needs to be recognized that the UN has played a very important role at the present moment to accelerate climate tection and to defeat climate change. We are bringing into the UN a very important discussion. We will have the first high
level debate on artificial intelligence. We are going to create an international scientifical panel, independent panel on artificial intelligence that will present reports regularly to the whole community. So we are involved in lots of activities of all kinds to the benefit of the people around the world. We have a problem, yes, in the core area of our activity, which is peace and security. We depend on a security Council that today as a problem with legitimacy because it
doesn't correspond anymore to the world of today. When we were talking about multipolarity, where is the multipolarity in.
The Security Council? Clearly not and it has a problem of efficiency, and that.
Is a serious restriction for our activity. But I usually say, when we do not have a dog, we hunt with a cat, but we hunt.
Let me ask you a couple of questions about the conflict in the Middle East. The first is, a number of states are coming here intending to recognize a Palestinian state. Help me understand in concrete terms what that will do if you have a wider number of countries recognizing that, what does it mean in concrete.
I think it's a very important pressure on Israel to understand that they cannot move on with the annexation West Bank, and that they cannot go move on without accepting the idea that we need an immediate cease fire in Gaza, with the immediate release of and then conditional release of all hostages, and with free humanitarian access in Gaza. And especially to say this that for me is very important.
People say, oh, but the two stage solution is very difficult. Yes, but what's alternative a one state solution in which millions of Palestdians either will be expelled or will be under the system of subjugation discrimination without rights. Is that acceptable in the twenty first century? I think it is not. If we would move into that one state solution with this kind of subjugation, there would be no peace in the Middle East and extremism.
Would rise everywhere in the world.
We must stop that possibility, and the only chance is to convince It will be difficult time, it will be complex, but we need to convince these two peoples that share the same lens that they need to have two states living in peace and security with each other.
I asked you, if you're going to meet with President Trump, will you be meeting with Prime Minister in net Yahoo when he comes to New York.
I am ready to accept any request by Prime Minister Nitania to meet the fact that we have different opinions doesn't mean that our discussion cannot be very useful.
I want to ask you about the conclusions of this independent commission here at the UN that Israel is committing genocide and Gaza, and I expect that you'll say in reply, this is an issue of semantics. It's a determination that's best left to the international courts. It's not for you.
But I assume you've looked at that seventy two page report in which those findings are laid out and that assessment is made, how does it shape your understanding or the way that you look at this conflict that's still unfolding.
Well, I mean, first of all, we all condemned in clearly and in a very strong way.
But you will not vollagenously.
The horrific attacks by Hamas. Let's not forget that that happened.
But we also consider that it is totally illegitimate, a collective punishment of the Palestinian people. And indeed, the situation Gaza is horrendous. We have the highest level of death and destruction that I've witnessed in my time as Secretary General, and we are seeing now in Gaza City the total destruction of the city, with people having to move in the most desperate circumstances, we have famine.
I mean, it couldn't be worst.
The legal attribution of genocide, I have not.
The power to do so.
It's for the courts and in the United Nations, it's the bodies of the United Nations that can decide that, the sud de Council or the General Assembly. What I can do, and I do, is of course, to denounce what, in my opinion is absolutely intolerable from the moral, political and legal situation in Gaza, and at the same time to mobilize as much as we can in very difficult circumstances, all the possible aids to the Policidian people that is suffering horrendously.
Let me ask you lastly about your future. You have about a year and a half left in your tenure. Research is going to be underway for your successor, and I'm curious what is a quality you think is essential for the person who helms this organization going forward? What makes an effective leader of the United Nations at this moment when so much we have understood about the international order is, if not in doubt changing.
I think the most import ORDENTI is whoever comes to be himself for herself and to fully assume that and not to be an instrument of any kind of pressure or any kind of negative influence.
It's to be authentic. I think it's the most important in the exercise of this function.
Mister Secretary General, thank you very much, and Joe and Cratill sent it back to you. The Secretary General has one hundred and fifty bilateral meetings here over the course of the next few weeks. Are very glad you could add another one to your agenda here in this conversation with us back to you in Washington.
It was a pleasure fascinating, David GA, thank you so much, Bloomberg's correspondent, host of The Big Take podcast, in conversation with the Secretary General of the UN. Of course, David and our full team in New York will be bringing us extensive coverage of the United Nations General Assembly next week from New York