With his Peace Council, “Trump proposes to create a new UN of which he would be the sole master”, denounces Lula

Brazilian President Lula accused Donald Trump this Friday, January 23, of wanting to become the “master” of a “new UN” with the creation of the “Peace Council”, specifying that he had contacted a number of world leaders to defend the United Nations.

“Instead of wanting to repair the UN (…) what is happening? President Trump is proposing to create a new UN of which he would be the sole master,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared at a Landless Movement event in Salvador de Bahia (north-east).

Donald Trump formally launched the “Peace Council” Thursday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, supposed to work to resolve conflicts around the world and in competition with the United Nations. The American president extended invitations to many world leaders to join his new body, including Lula who did not respond.

Defending “the central role” of the United Nations

The Brazilian leader in his speech on Friday defended multilateralism in the face of what he described as the advance of “unilateralism” and the “law of the strongest”. The day before, he spoke on the phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping who expressed his desire to defend “the central role” of the UN, without mentioning the new organization created at the initiative of Donald Trump.

Deploring that “the UN Charter is being torn up,” Lula said he spent “a week calling all the countries in the world” to try to “find a way to come together” and defend the multilateral system.

He specified that he had spoken in particular with Russian President Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi and his Mexican counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum.

The Brazilian president also criticized the Gaza reconstruction project launched by the Trump administration after the Israeli offensive. “They destroyed, killed more than 70,000 people to say that now we are going to rebuild Gaza and build luxury hotels there,” he lambasted.

The White House announced a “Peace Council” chaired by Donald Trump as part of the plan to end the war in the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip. But the draft “charter” reveals a much broader initiative and mandate, with the ambition of making it a true substitute for the United Nations.