UNITED NATIONS — Some of the West’s fiercest critics made their cases in the closing hours of the U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders, as Syria and North Korea on Monday accused the United States and its allies of trying to impose their will on the world.
Syria’s top diplomat called for a U.S.-led military coalition to get out of his country, a North Korean ambassador said his nation wouldn’t yield to U.N. demands to give up its nuclear weapons program, and both condemned sanctions against their countries.
If the messages weren’t exactly new, they carried the extra weight of a once-a-year chance to speak from the same podium as the leaders of other nations, including their adversaries. U.S. President Joe Biden addressed the assembly last week, briefly complaining that North Korea “continues to blatantly violate U.N. sanctions” over its nuclear activities.
North Korean U.N. Ambassador Kim Song retorted Monday that Biden “picked on us,” and Kim shrugged off his message.
“To put it clearly, we have never recognized such resolutions of the United Nations that impose pressure” because North Korea views them as U.S. aims given an international imprimatur, Kim said.
He said relations were potentially “heading into a much more dangerous phase” — potentially the shakiest since World War II — because of the “high-handedness and arbitrariness of some countries” that he said were trying to overwrite the international system with “Western values.”
Syria Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad also took aim at sanctions, which the U.S., some other countries and the European Union have imposed on his country’s government, oil industry and more. He said his country has been “economically besieged” by powers bent on getting their way and retaining their wealth.
“The war against Syria, ultimately, was an attempt by the West to maintain control over the world,” he said.
The civil war began in 2011 with protests demanding that President Bashar Assad’s government make democratic reforms, but the situation quickly escalated into fighting that has killed hundreds of thousands.
