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(AP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday warned China and the United States of a potential new Cold War, imploring the countries to repair their “completely dysfunctional” relationship.
The UN Secretary General spoke to international news agency The Associated Press (AP) ahead of this week’s annual United Nations gathering of world leaders — a convening blemished by COVID-19 and climate concerns.
Antonio Guterres pointed out that the world’s two major economic powers should be cooperating on climate and negotiating more robustly on trade and technology even given persisting political fissures about human rights, economics, online security and sovereignty in the South China Sea.
“Unfortunately we have a confrontation today. We need to re-establish a functional relationship between the two powers” the UN secretary-general said, adding, “We need to avoid at all cost a Cold War that would be different from the past one, and probably more dangerous and more difficult to manage.”
Guterres said the US-Britain deal to give Australia nuclear-powered submarines so it could operate undetected in Asia “is just one small piece of a more complex puzzle … this completely dysfunctional relationship between China and the United States.”
The Cold War between the Soviet Union and its East bloc allies and the United States and its Western allies began immediately after World War II and ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Two years ago, Guterres had warned global leaders of the risk of the world splitting in two, with the United States and China creating rival internets, currency, trade, financial rules “and their own zero-sum geopolitical and military strategies”.
To a question about the UN’s role in the new Afghanistan, Guterres called it “a fantasy” to believe that UN involvement “will be able all of a sudden to produce an inclusive government, to guarantee that all human rights are respected, to guarantee that no terrorists will ever exist in Afghanistan, that drug trafficking will stop.”