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By Matthew Russell Lee, Photos

UNITED NATIONS, September 20 – When US Vice President Mike Pence spoke in the UN Security Council on September 20, he spoke again about North Korea, without using the moniker Rocket Man. He said, "We will always put America first. But America First does not mean America Alone. As the president said, America will forever be a great friend of the world.He sent me here to reiterate
President Trump and I believe the UN must act to make peacekeeping more accountable and more credible. Peacekeeping missions must support a political solution, realistic and achievable mandates, have an exit strategy, and adjust to progress and failure. When a mission succeeds, we should not prolong it. When a mission fails, we should restructure it. After all, keeping the peace is at the heart of the UN mission. The very first words of the UN’s charger are to maintain international peace. And just yesterday Trump challenged the world body to do better.... The regime in North Korea is relentlessly pursuing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. The US is grateful to see the SC adopt tough new sanctions on North Korea. But the US will continue to bring the full range of American power to bear on Pyongyang. We will continue to marshal pressure to demand that North Korea end its ballistic and nuclear programs. The US has great strength and patience nut all options are on the power and if we are forced to defend ourselves and our allies, we will do so." We'll see. When UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres held his pre-General Assembly week press conference on September 13, the majority of questions were about Myanmar. Inner City Press asked about reform, in light of the Ng Lap Seng UN bribery guilty verdicts and new reports of peacekeepers' sexual abuse. Guterres responded on the latter. From the UN's transcript: Inner City Press: Matthew Lee, Inner City Press, on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access, hoping for readouts of your diplomatic merry-go-round upstairs during the GA week.  I want... you speak the lot about reforms. It's something I tried to ask at the stakeout but thanks for giving me the question. This case of John Ashe, who I know has deceased~-- may he rest in peace, but there was a court decision this summer in which basically it painted a picture of the UN as being quite susceptible to bribery. There was a Chin... a Macau-based businessman, Ng Lap Seng, was found guilty. So, I won't go through it all except to say, I wanted to know what your view of whether the UN... beyond just some reforms to the PGA's (President of the General Assembly) office, whether it has instituted enough reforms. Your... your... the former PGA yesterday sitting here said that there are crows picking around the side of the UN. There are a lot of business interests... basically, they try to buy their way into the UN by hooking up with a small state.  So, I wanted to know whether your reforms will address that. And there's also a Code Blue report out today about sexual abuse where they say that, of cases they've uncovered, many of them are not disclosed in the conduct and discipline website. What's your plan during this GA week to try to address the sexual abuse issue of peacekeeping? Secretary-General:  Well, in addition to the sexual abuse, as you know, we have taken already a number of measures. A global victims advocate was appointed, and four victims advocates were appointed in the four situations that are more dramatic in several African contexts.  We are preparing a compact to be signed with Member States in order to make sure that there is effective commitment in relation to this. I'm creating a circle of leadership with Heads of Government and State to assume engagement of states in making sure that everything is investigated properly. And so, we are really committed to make the best we can in this area, knowing the difficulties and the problems and sometimes even the... especially, my main concern is with the victims that sometimes have an enormous problem in coming with their cases because of the risks that they might face in different conditions with the community or even with the country or even if the UN Mission is not properly organised. So, we are deeply committed to that.  But the best protection in relation to abuses is the whistleblower policy protection. We have introduced a first group of measures to enhance the whistleblower protection when I assumed functions immediately in January. So, it's probably my first measure.  And after that, we have introduced a number of other reforms, which I believe are bringing our whistleblower protection policy to the state of the art. And if that's not the case, if there are other things to be suggested, we are ready to introduce them, because that is the best guarantee that people can detect and denounce things that happen and that they will be protected if they do so. This is, for me, an absolute must and the best possible guarantee an organisation can have in relation to the risks of abuse of power or abuses of any other kind or of corruption or whatever.  So this is a big concern for me, and I think we are acting as we can but with total determination to address the problem." We'll have more on this.

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