NEW YORK: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday told Arab News that the international community \u2014 though not he personally \u2014 owes a \u201cmea culpa\u201d to the people of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Sudan, whose suffering he said the world has too often chosen to ignore. <\/p>\n
At his final press conference before the opening of the 81st UN General Assembly, Arab News asked Guterres what he would say to people in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere who had pinned their hopes on the UN and whose tragedies it failed to stop, and whether he personally owed them an apology. <\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019Culpa\u2019 means that I am responsible for what\u2019s happening to them,\u201d Guterres said, pushing back on the premise. \u201cI\u2019ve been consistently fighting for the rights of those people.\u201d <\/p>\n
But he said \u201con behalf of the international community, there is a mea culpa that needs to be expressed, because the international community has been many times indifferent to the suffering of those people, and this is absolutely intolerable.\u201d <\/p>\n
He pointed to the current crisis in the Gulf as an example, saying attention had repeatedly drifted from Gaza and the West Bank whenever a new flashpoint emerged elsewhere. <\/p>\n \u201cThere will be no peace in the Middle East without solution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, and there will be no peace in the Horn of Africa if the Sudan crisis is not solved,\u201d he told Arab News. <\/p>\n Wednesday\u2019s press conference was the last of Guterres\u2019 tenure before world leaders converge on New York for high-level week; his second term expires Dec. 31, with a successor due to take office Jan. 1, 2027 after the Security Council forwards a recommendation to the General Assembly, a process that began in November 2025 and currently involves eight declared candidates. <\/p>\n In Gaza and the West Bank, Guterres said Israel \u201cis not accepting the implementation of the peace plan as it is conceived now,\u201d even as strikes continue and civilians in Gaza face serious threats. In the West Bank, he said, \u201ccreeping annexation\u201d is under way \u201cwith violence by the settlers, sometimes with the support of security forces that are absolutely intolerable,\u201d and warned that new settlements, if completed, could split the territory in two \u2014 a move he called \u201centirely against international law.\u201d <\/p>\n He called for an immediate halt to actions that could lead to \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d and said conditions must be created \u201cfor the two-state solution to be again put seriously on the table.\u201d <\/p>\n He said the US-backed Board of Peace, led by Nickolay Mladenov, \u201cis not replacing the United Nations\u201d and has run into the same obstruction the UN itself has faced, saying a recent push to advance \u201cphases one and two\u201d of the plan was again blocked by Israel. <\/p>\n The goal, he said, remains \u201cthe progressive disarmament of Hamas and progressive withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, full humanitarian access,\u201d and a link between Gaza and the West Bank so a two-state outcome is not lost. <\/p>\n The Gulf crisis drew a similar call for negotiation: Guterres said \u201cthere is no solution for the (Iran) crisis without dialogue,\u201d between the US and Iran and between Iran and Gulf states, citing Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt and Saudi Arabia as potential mediators \u2014 noting Riyadh \u201cis at the present moment becoming one of the victims of this conflict.\u201d <\/p>\n He said he had \u201cclearly condemned\u201d Houthi attacks on civilian infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and on shipping in the Bab al-Mandab strait, while urging dialogue between the warring sides. <\/p>\n He added that in Yemen military action \u201cwill not solve the problem by itself.\u201d <\/p>\n Asked whether states arming the warring parties in Sudan bear responsibility for prolonging a conflict he called \u201cabsolutely horrible,\u201d Guterres said the Sudanese parties bear responsibility for fighting each other, but that outside states are fueling the war \u2014 a conclusion, he said, reached by the Security Council\u2019s Panel of Experts. <\/p>\n \u201cThere should be accountability,\u201d he said, for countries supplying weapons later used to attack civilians in the war, one of the world\u2019s largest humanitarian crises. <\/p>\n In Syria, Guterres said President Ahmad al-Sharaa \u201chas said all the right things\u201d on development, singling out the government\u2019s agreement with Kurdish leadership as \u201cmoving in the right direction,\u201d while acknowledging Syria \u201chas enormous problems\u201d after years of war and dictatorship and said the country\u2019s education system needs further attention. <\/p>\n Guterres also warned that artificial intelligence development is \u201cracing ahead of our understanding of the risks\u201d and that voluntary, unverifiable pauses will not suffice, calling for binding international guardrails rather than good intentions alone, with AI safety expected to feature prominently in his talks with leaders next week. <\/p>\n On climate, citing recent flooding in Nepal and warning of approaching tipping points in coral reefs, forests and polar ice sheets, Guterres said the world will overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and must keep that overshoot \u201cas short and as low as possible,\u201d while arguing falling renewable energy costs and fossil-fuel price volatility tied to conflict make a faster transition both economically and strategically rational. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Palestinian](\"https:\/\/assets.maestronewsroom.com\/media\/30f6532d-717b-4366-9158-9c455299fcd9\/1789618042340-dcfe3fbe4c0c1a62.jpg\")
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