Head of UN in major speech: “We are on the edge of an abyss —“We face the greatest crises in our lifetime. The world must wake up.”

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Joe Biden summoned the world’s nations to forcefully address the festering global issues of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and human rights abuses in his first address before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. He decried military conflict and insisted the U.S. is not seeking “a new Cold War” with China.

NEW YORK (AP) — In person and on screen, world leaders returned to the United Nations’ foremost gathering for the first time in the pandemic era on Tuesday with a formidable, diplomacy-packed agenda and a sharply worded warning from the international organization’s leader: “We face the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetime.”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres rang the alarm in his annual state-of-the-world speech at the opening of the U.N. General Assembly’s high-level meeting for leaders of its 193 member nations. More than 100 heads of state and government kept away by COVID-19 are returning to the U.N. in person for the first time in two years. But with the pandemic still raging, about 60 will deliver pre-recorded statements over coming days.

“We are on the edge of an abyss — and moving in the wrong direction,” Guterres said. “I’m here to sound the alarm. The world must wake up.”

The president said the halting of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan last month, ending America’s longest war, set the table for his administration to shift its attention to intensive diplomacy at a moment with no shortage of crises facing the globe.

“To deliver for our own people, we must also engage deeply with the rest of the world,” he said.

He added: “We’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy, of using the power of our development aid to invest in new ways of lifting people up around the world.”