Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.

The United Nations Security Council is there to protect the interest of the Americans and the British.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

We saw there was no consensus in the U.N. Security Council. It was impossible, due to the threatened veto by some.

India seeks to be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council... things like this don't happen automatically, you need constant dialogue and discussion with the world.

The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council.

The need for a permanent status resolution approved by Congress is made even more clear to me because of my experience as a former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain and France would abstain.

The United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what America is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms.

You don’t go for a vote in the Security Council unless you know that you have the votes to win.

One of the problems with the Security Council is that there are vetoes, and they do not allow us to do what might be justified from the point of view of sanctions.

Russia holds a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. This is a privilege, and it is a responsibility. Yet in Syria and in Aleppo, Russia is abusing this historic privilege.

When one's greatest 'world stage' ambition is a non-voting seat on the U.N. Security Council five years down the road, one would not want to say anything to hurt the feelings of the veto holders in Moscow or Beijing. We get it. But let's at least be honest about all this, please. Enough of the 'Canada is back' slogans already.

If we want to expect something from this [Barack Obama] administration, it is not to be weak, to be strong to say that "we don't have evidence," that "we have to obey the international law", that "we have to go back to the Security Council and the United Nations".

But you'll notice, you will notice that Russia and China, invariably at the United Nations, move to block American action, to repress or hem in or punish other kinds of outlaw. Who stands behind Mugabi at the United Nations? Russia and China do. Who tried successfully to prevent the United Nations from speaking with one voice on its most signal violation of its resolutions, Iraq? Russia and China, again. North Korea the same. Burma the same.

Consider in 1945, when the United Nations was first formed, there were something like fifty-one original member countries. Now the United Nations is made up of 193 nations, but it follows the same structure in which five nations control it. It's an anti-democratic structure.

Of course what is talked about in the U.N. General Assembly is very important. Officials, the leaders of nations, appear there to speak of the most important topics - what they perceive to be the most important topics.

There are big issues, like the reform of the Security Council. These kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must keep his eye on.

We would like UN resolutions to be enforced, including on Iraq.

The United Nations has become a place where many countries seek to achieve a lynching of the United States by resolution.

[Describing the United Nations:] The world cockpit of propaganda.

American pressure has pummeled into submission the UN's role as an impartial Middle East negotiator

… unless the United Nations stops becoming simply a debating society for anti-American rhetoric, I'm going to show them the door.

The G7 - and earlier, the G8 - were a group of countries that shared the same values with regard to freedom and democracy, and through the annexation of Crimea, Russia made it clear at a certain point that these values of keeping the peace, integrity of the borders of a country were not being respected.

I thought that the United Nations is a creature of the five super-powers who were given veto powers. I don't like veto powers at all.