联合国-联合国秘书长周一表达了强烈的希望乌克兰战争将于2023年结束，在其他全球热点上谴责伊朗政府对示威者的镇压，敦促所有国家打击来自极右翼的恐怖主义威胁，并呼吁国际社会告诉以色列新的右翼政府，“除了两国解决方案，别无选择。”
在一场内容广泛的年终新闻发布会上，秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯表示，他看不到近期结束乌克兰战争的谈判前景，并预计已经升级的军事冲突将继续下去。但他呼吁尽一切可能在2023年底前停止这场自二战以来欧洲最具破坏性的冲突-他强烈希望这将发生。
在其他问题上，古特雷斯敦促阿富汗的塔利班统治者将所有族群纳入政府，恢复女孩接受各级教育的权利和妇女工作的权利，并停止阿富汗领土上的所有恐怖活动。他重申了联合国追求朝鲜半岛无核化的决心，称国际社会也必须追求这一目标，“这对东亚和世界的和平与安全至关重要”
秘书长还对包括推特在内的所有社交媒体平台的管理者提出了一些建议:你有责任维护新闻自由，同时确保仇恨言论和极端主义观点，包括新纳粹分子和白人至上主义者的观点，不会进入你的平台。
回顾2022年，古特雷斯说“可能有很多理由感到绝望”——地缘政治分歧使解决全球问题变得困难，甚至不可能，生活成本危机，日益增长的不平等，世界上大多数最贫穷国家“凝视着破产和违约的深渊”，偿债支出飙升35%，这是几十年来的最大增幅。
但随着这一年的结束，他说，“我们正在努力击退绝望，反击幻灭，并找到真正的解决方案。”
秘书长指出，周一早些时候达成的关于保护世界土地和海洋的历史性协议为拯救发展中国家的生物多样性提供了重要的资金，他说:“我们终于开始与大自然缔结和平协定。”
他还列举了一些冲突中的“进步措施”。
他说，在埃塞俄比亚，“非洲联盟斡旋和平的努力是一个充满希望的理由。”在刚果，安哥拉和东非共同体领导的外交努力创造了“政治对话框架”，以结束该国矿产丰富的东部的危机。在也门，为期六个月的停火“为人民带来了真正的红利”，尽管没有延期，“没有重大军事行动”，航班、燃料和食品的运送仍在继续。
他说，即使在乌克兰，由联合国和土耳其斡旋达成的7月协议也“正在发挥作用”，该协议旨在重启乌克兰的谷物运输，以及俄罗斯的食品和化肥出口
古特雷斯说，在没有立即进行谈判的前景的情况下，联合国目前正在集中精力扩大这项倡议，通过增加出口和检查，从三个黑海港口运送了超过1400万吨乌克兰谷物。
他说，俄罗斯的小麦出口“增加了三倍”，联合国正在研究从黑海港口出口俄罗斯氨的可能性，氨是迫切需要的肥料的关键成分。
这位联合国秘书长说，联合国也非常有兴趣在乌克兰和俄罗斯1月份庆祝东正教圣诞节之前加快交换乌克兰和俄罗斯战俘。
关于恐怖主义，古特雷斯敦促谴责西方国家和世界其他地方的一切形式的极端主义，包括新纳粹主义、白人至上主义、反犹太主义和反穆斯林仇恨。
他说:“这显然是一种威胁，我们必须以巨大的决心抗击这种威胁。”。古特雷斯指出，德国最近涉嫌政变阴谋，其中20多名与极右翼运动有关的人被拘留，这只是对世界各地民主社会构成威胁的一个例子。
这位秘书长还尖锐批评了伊朗对和平抗议者的镇压，在一名22岁的妇女被道德警察拘留并被指控没有正确佩戴头巾后，和平抗议者于9月走上街头。据监督抗议活动的组织伊朗人权活动人士称，超过450人被杀，超过18000人被拘留。
“我们正在目睹我们强烈谴责的大规模侵犯人权行为，”古特雷斯说，称伊朗政府的行为“完全不可接受”。他说，他在9月份向伊朗总统提出了这个问题，联合国继续向伊朗提出抗议。
至于伊朗与六个大国之间的2015年核协议，即美国前总统唐纳德·特朗普于2018年退出的JCPOA，古特雷斯表示，“我们将在我们有限的信心范围内尽一切努力确保”该协议不会丢失。
美国重新加入该协议的谈判已经停滞。该协议放松了对伊朗的制裁，以换取对其核计划的限制。“目前，我们面临失去JCPOA的严重风险，”古特雷斯说，“在我看来，这将是该地区及其他地区和平与稳定的一个非常负面的因素。”
在长达几十年的以巴冲突中，古特雷斯被问及今年有200多名巴勒斯坦人被杀，其中大多数是平民，以及以色列选举了历史上最右翼的政府，包括反对巴勒斯坦建国的成员。
他说，联合国一直非常明确地谴责针对巴勒斯坦人的暴力行为，并对此表示关切，“因为我们认为两国解决方案没有B计划，我们非常关注下一届以色列政府在这方面可能会做什么。”
古特雷斯说:“我认为非常重要的是，整个国际社会应该非常明确地向以色列政府解释，除了两国解决方案之外，没有其他选择，不应该采取任何单方面行动来质疑两国解决方案。”
UN chief strongly hopes war in Ukraine will end in 2023
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations chief expressed strong hopes Monday that the Ukraine war will end in 2023 and on other global hotspots condemned the Iranian government’s crackdown on demonstrators, urged all countries to fight terrorist threats from the extreme right and called on the international community to tell Israel’s new right-wing government that “there is no alternative to the two-state solution.”
In a wide-ranging end-of-year news conference, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he sees no prospect of talks to end the war in Ukraine in the immediate future and expects the already escalating military conflict to continue. But he called for everything possible to be done to halt the most devastating conflict in Europe since World War II by the end of 2023 -- which he strongly hopes will happen.
On other issues, Guterres urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to include all ethnic groups in the government, restore girls’ rights to education at all levels and women’s rights to work, and to stop all terrorist activity on its territory. And he reiterated the U.N.’s determination to pursue the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, saying the international community must also pursue this goal which “is fundamental for peace and security in east Asia and in the world.”
The secretary-general also had some advice for the managers of all social media platforms including Twitter: You have a responsibility to preserve freedom of the press and at the same time ensure that hate speech and extremist views, including of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, don’t find their way onto your platforms.
Looking back at 2022, Guterres said “there may be plenty of reasons for despair” -- geopolitical divides that have made solving global problems difficult if not impossible, a cost-of-living crisis, growing inequalities with most of the world’s poorest countries “staring down the abyss of insolvency and default,” with debt service payments skyrocketing by 35%, the largest increase in decades.
But as the year ends, he said, “we are working to push back against despair, to fight back against disillusion and to find real solutions.”
The secretary-general pointed to the historic agreement reached early Monday on protecting the world’s lands and oceans that provides critical financing to save biodiversity in the developing world, saying, “We are finally starting to forge a peace pact with nature.”
He also cited “a measure of progress” in some conflicts.
In Ethiopia, he said, “efforts by the African Union to broker peace are a reason for hope.” In Congo, diplomatic efforts led by Angola and the East African Community have created “a framework for political dialogue” to end the crisis in the country’s mineral-rich east. In Yemen, a six-month truce “delivered real dividends for people” and even though it wasn’t renewed, “there have been no major military operations” and flights and fuel and food deliveries are continuing.
Even in Ukraine, he said, the July agreements brokered by the U.N. and Turkey to restart grain deliveries from Ukraine and food and fertilizer exports from Russia “are making a difference.”
Without an immediate prospect for talks, Guterres said the U.N. is currently concentrating its efforts on expanding the initiative that has seen over 14 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain shipped from three Black Sea ports by increasing exports and inspections.
He said Russian wheat exports “have multiplied three-fold,” and the U.N. is looking into possibly exporting Russian ammonia -- a key ingredient of desperately needed fertilizer -- from a Black Sea port.
The U.N. is also very interested in accelerating the exchange of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners of war before Orthodox Christmas which both countries celebrate in January, the U.N. chief said.
On terrorism, Guterres urged condemnation of every form of extremism including neo-Nazism, white supremacism, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred in Western countries and elsewhere in the world.
“This is clearly a threat, and we must fight that threat with enormous determination,” he said. Guterres pointed to the recent alleged coup plot in Germany in which more than 20 people linked to a far-right movement were detained as just one example of the threat to democratic societies around the world.
The secretary-general was also sharply critical of Iran’s crackdown on peaceful protesters, who took to the streets in September after the death of a 22-year-old woman taken into custody by the morality police and accused of not wearing her headscarf properly. Over 450 people have been killed and over 18,000 detained, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the protests.
“We are witnessing massive violations of human rights that we strongly condemned,” Guterres said, calling the Iranian government’s actions “totally unacceptable.” He said he raised the issue with Iran’s president in September and the U.N. has continued to protest to Iran.
As for the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers known as the JCPOA, which former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018, Guterres said “we will do everything we can in the context of our limited sphere of confidence to make sure” the agreement isn’t lost.
Negotiations on the U.S. rejoining the deal, which eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, have stalled. “We are at the present moment, in a serious risk of losing the JCPOA," Guterres said, “which in my opinion would be a very negative factor for peace and stability in the region and further afield.”
On the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Guterres was asked about more than 200 Palestinians killed this year, most of them civilians, and Israel’s election of the most right-wing government in its history, including members opposed to a Palestinian state.
He said the U.N. has been very clear in condemning violence against the Palestinians and is concerned “because we believe there is no Plan B to the two-state solution, and we are very concerned with what the next Israeli government might do in that regard.”
“I think it’s very important that the whole of the international community be very clear explaining to the government in Israel that there is no alternative to the two-state solution, and that no unilateral actions should be taken putting into question the two-state solution,” Guterres said.
