THE WASHINGTON POST – NEW YORK – President Obama on Tuesday challenged the United Nations and its members to respond more actively to resolve the civil war in Syria, using the conflict as an example of the wider challenges facing the world five years into his White House tenure.
“Our response has not matched the scale of the challenge,” Obama told the U.N. General Assembly. “The crisis in Syria and the destabilization of the region goes to the heart of the broader challenges the international community must now face.”
Obama used Syria’s crisis to highlight what he called the “convulsions” reshaping the Middle East and North Africa, a tumultuous region that served as the centerpiece of his address. He said that for the remainder of his time in office, his Middle East policy efforts would focus resolving the controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.
“Real breakthroughs on these two issues . . .would have a profound and positive impact on the entire Middle East and North Africa,” Obama said. “But the current convulsions arising out of the Arab Spring remind us that a just and lasting peace cannot be measured only by agreements between nations.”
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