"President Barack Obama will chair a meeting of the United Nations Security Council later this month, becoming the first U.S. president to do so, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said today.
In the two and a half days that POTUS plans to be in New York for events surrounding the opening session of the UN General Assembly starting September 21, Obama will address the UN General Assembly, followed, by dint of the alphabetical proximity of their last names, by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Equally by dint of circumstance, the United States presides over the 15-member UN Security Council this month, while Libya holds the presidency of the UN General Assembly.
Qaddafi, on his first visit to the U.S., has agreed to confine his activities to Manhattan, Rice indicated and not to pitch his tent at Libyan-owned property in New Jersey. Obama will not provide any sort of introduction for Qaddafi, Rice indicated. The leaders will just speak sequentially.
Among other UNGA events, whose sometimes complicated diplomatic choreography Rice laid out at a breakfast for journalists hosted by the Christian Science Monitor today, Obama will speak at a UN Security Council summit on climate change, host a luncheon for visiting Sub-Saharan African heads of state, as well as the traditional U.S. evening reception for world leaders -- to which Iran is not invited, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs indicated yesterday.
Obama will also host a reception for some two dozen top contributing UN peacekeeper nations.
Among his most high priority activities will be chairing the UN summit on nonproliferation, which the Obama administration has set out as a top priority. The U.S. is hosting the meeting of the Non Proliferation Treaty review conference in the spring in Washington, Rice noted, as well as in the midst of strategic arms reductions treaty renewal negotiations with Russia and a treaty on banning the testing of nuclear weapons.
Rice demurred on questions about what kind of meetings may take place on the sidelines of the official UN activities, including as yet unconfirmed reports that Obama hopes to host a meeting of Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas in New York, at which the relaunch of peace negotiations may be announced. Middle East hands have also said in recent days that the Obama administration also hopes to enlist Hosni Mubarak to speak at the Mideast peace talks announcement, to offer on behalf of some Arab states to show Israel some intermediate steps towards normalization of relations as Israel undertakes a worked-for temporary settlement freeze and pursues negotiations for establishing a Palestinian state.
Rice said that the so-called P5+1 group -- the permanent five members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany -- would be discussing the ongoing issue of Iran's nuclear program, but did not indicate that new sanctions towards Iran would be a likely deliverable from the September UN meetings. The UN Security Council has already passed three sets of resolutions on Iran. It passed a new resolution against North Korea in June, the toughest UN sanctions resolution regime yet, Rice noted.
Foreign policy hands told POLITICO that recent word at the State Department is that five Africa nations would not be invited to the Obama-hosted luncheon for visiting sub-Saharan African heads of state. Among them, Zimbabwe, Sudan (whose president is the subject of an International Criminal Court war crimes indictment), Eritrea (which has moved to shut down a UN peacekeeping mission there), Niger, and Guinae. The White House and State Department have said they are not yet prepared to discuss who is not invited to Obama's Africa luncheon, and an administration source indicated the list may still be in flux."
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