The council on foreign relations thinktank in New York has denied reports that it cancelled its much criticised meeting for the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi to come to speak to an invited audience.

Criticism started when private invitations went out last week including some in the Iranian diaspora who thought Raisi was a human rights abuser and an inappropriate man to speak to an audience that believed in liberal values. No immediate official statement was given by the CFR, but protests were gathering outside the New York thinktank.

The event in common with sessions with world leaders visiting New York for the UN had not been advertised. Nearly 180 thinktanks and NGOs had written to the CFR asking for the invitation to be withdrawn on the basis of his human rights record.

The authors recognised the CFR role as a platform for dialogue but added:

There can be no justification for inviting a perpetrator of crimes against humanity to speak at your panel.

Nazanin Boniadi, the actress and human rights advocate, said on Twitter she had declined the invitation, citing his complicity in crimes against humanity. She said:

Some say that these meetings allow us to hold the feet of dictators to the fire, but the past 44 years have shown us that not only are these meetings futile, the Islamic Republic uses them to legitimize themselves on the global stage. Continuing the same practices and expecting tyrants to change their behavior seems completely irrational. Democratic institutions hold the key to tipping the balance of power in favour of those risking everything for freedom. If you afford your members the opportunity to meet dictators behind closed doors, then at least offer them the chance to also hear from their opponents in the open.

The CFR denied the reports that the meeting with Raisi had been cancelled, but said it had been postponed at the request of the Iranians until Wednesday and at a different location site.

As public and politicians wait for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to address the UN general assembly, here’s where things stand so far today:

• Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged to step up efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine “through diplomacy and dialogue”.

• Joe Biden accused Russia of “shredding longstanding arms control agreements” but pledged that the US would “lead by example” in limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. He warned against allowing Russia to “brutalize” Ukraine without consequences.

• Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda used his address to say the “brutal” war in Ukraine must end and that it cannot be “converted into a frozen war”. He called for “restoring the full territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders.”

• France called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council over the launch by Azerbaijan of a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

• Biden pledged to ‘responsibly manage’ competition with China so it does not ‘slip into conflict’.

• Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for more action to resist climate change and said there was progress on protecting the Amazon rainforest. He called for work “to create space for negotiations” on the war in Ukraine.

Aamna Mohdin

A UN report calling on countries to consider financial reparations for transatlantic slavery has been hailed as a significant step forward by campaigners.

The report by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said no country had comprehensively accounted for the past and addressed the legacy of the mass enslavement of people of African descent for more than 400 years.

“Under international human rights law, compensation for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, may also constitute a form of reparations,” the report said.

In the context of historical wrongs and harms suffered as a result of colonialism and enslavement, the assessment of the economic damage can be extremely difficult owing to the length of time passed and the difficulty of identifying the perpetrators and victims.

The report stressed, however, that the difficulty in making a legal claim to compensation “cannot be the basis for nullifying the existence of underlying legal obligations”.

Campaigners have described the report as an important step forward in the fight for reparative justice.

Erdoğan says the UN’s security council has ceased to be a guarantor of world security, instead becoming “a battleground for the political strategies” of its five permanent members. “The world is bigger than five,” he says.

The Turkish leader says that Ankara has endeavored to keep Russia and Ukraine around the table since the beginning of the war, adding that “the war will have no winners”.

We will step up our efforts to end the war through diplomacy and dialogue on the basis of Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity.

Erdoğan warns that the failure to implement the Black Sea Grain initiative has “left the world facing new crisis”, but that Turkey has a new plan whereby another one million tonnes of grain will be released to countries in dire need.

Biden pledges to ‘lead by example’ on nuclear arms control

Julian Borger

Joe Biden has accused Russia of “shredding longstanding arms control agreements” but pledged that the US would “lead by example” in limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

In his address to the UN general assembly, Biden castigated the Putin regime for its suspension, in February this year, of the 2010 New Start treaty, the last arms control agreement between the two countries.

That suspension, coupled with Russia’s withdrawal from the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty in 2007, was “irresponsible and makes the entire world less safe”, the president said.

However, Biden insisted that the US “is going to continue to pursue good faith efforts to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction and lead by example, no matter what else is happening in the world”.

The statement appeared to be a confirmation that the US would continue the policy it has pursued since Vladimir Putin’s suspension of New Start, by not going beyond the treaty’s limits of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, and 700 deployed delivery systems.

At the time of Moscow’s suspension of the New Start treaty, Russian officials said their government would continue to observe those limits, but there have been no inspections of Russian nuclear weapons facilities since the start of the Covid pandemic, and Russia has ceased to share data that was required by the agreement.

In his speech, Biden said the US also remained committed to diplomatic means to contain North Korean’s nuclear weapons programme and would “remain steadfast in our commitment that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons”.

Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association, welcomed Biden’s statement on the New Start limits.

“I’m glad that Biden said this to keep the flame going, if you think about how you don’t have much room in a UN speech,” Kimball said.

It’s a positive signal that the United States remains ready to engage in serious dialogue on nuclear weapons production and arms control despite whatever else has happened in the Russian relationship.

In his address, Biden urged the UN general assembly to uphold the UN charter in its approach to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, framing it as a matter of principle, national sovereignty and territorial integrity that was essential to all UN members.

“Russia believes that the world will grow weary and allow it to brutalise Ukraine without consequence,” Biden said.

But I ask you this: If we abandon the core principles … to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected? If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?

“I respectfully suggest the answer is no,” the president added.

We must stand up to this naked aggression today to deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow.

Much of the rest of Biden’s speech was dedicated to the principles of global cooperation to take on basic issues of poverty, human rights and the climate crisis. The US and other supporters of Ukraine are well aware that many countries at the UN, especially the developing nations in the Group of 77, are becoming restive at the focus on Ukraine, when the death toll from conflict, famine and climate change is so enormous in the global south. Biden stressed that he takes these concerns seriously.

“My country has to meet this critical moment to work with countries in every region, in common cause to join together with partners who share a common vision of the future of the world,” he said.

The United States seeks a more secure, more prosperous, more equitable world for all people, because we know our future is bound up with yours … No nation can meet the challenges of today alone.

Duda warned that the world is about to “discover the scale of manipulation and disinformation” by Russia in its effort to “justify Russian crimes on the civilian population” and to shape international public opinion “by building a false vision of the reality”.

The international community must confront manipulation and disinformation and fight against the “hypocrisy of history”, he said.

What is evil should be called evil. A crime should be called a crime.

Duda said the US has played a “pivotal role” in ensuring security in Europe for more than a century, adding that the commitment of the US is essential for European security.

It is too often that Europe tends to forget that it owes its security and prosperity to the US commitment and presence.

Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, used his speech to call on “courageous and visionary” leaders to stand against the “imperial policy” of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Russia’s full-scale aggression on Ukraine has led to “immense global problems” in its aftermath and tested the international world order, he said.

World peace has never been as threatened as it is today.

He cited Poland’s history of being invaded by Nazi Germany in September 1939 as why Warsaw “understands the tragedy of Ukraine better than any other country in the world”.

For the first time in a long time, Russians have shown the face we have known for hundreds of years. They believed that the nations around them should be subjected to them. We say no.

Russia believes that the old days of the empire that collapsed less than 20 years ago, that domination will again be a feature of our region. Well, it will not. Those days are over once and for all.

Duda said the “brutal” war in Ukraine must end and that it cannot be “converted into a frozen war … This can only be done by restoring the full territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders.”

He said Poland is engaged in initiatives to hold Russia accountable for violations of fundamental norms of international law, and that it “strongly” supports the work of the international criminal court and the international court of justice.

The issue of the US opioid crisis was brought home over the weekend in New York City when one-year-old Nicholas Dominici died from a toxic opioid exposure while attending a daycare center in the Bronx.

A package containing several thousand dollars’ worth of fentanyl was later discovered inside the center where a pair of two-year-old boys and an eight-month-old girl were poisoned by the drug.

Fentanyl residue was found underneath a mat where the children had napped, the New York police department’s chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, said at a news conference. The operator of the home-based Divino Niño center and another man who lived there have pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

“We’re not going to allow this incident to take place and ignore this as just another day, another tragedy in the city,” New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, said at the news conference. Adams said that it was “just total madness” that a daycare was being used to process drugs.

At the UN, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, also referred to Dominici’s death.

This is the day-in, day-out story in the United States.

In an appeal for international cooperation, he warned his international listeners that the US experience was coming their way.

I just want to tell you, because we’ve lived it, we’re experiencing it here in this country, this is coming.

US diplomats at the UN general assembly in New York have unveiled steps aimed at tackling the proliferation of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs which the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, described as a “global threat”.

At a meeting Monday, the most senior US diplomat announced the formation of an international coalition to address the crisis, saying that the US “may have been to some extent a canary in the coalmine when it comes to fentanyl, but alas, we are not alone”.

Blinken pointed to fentanyl and other synthetic drugs as the number-one killer of Americans aged 18 to 49. The US recorded 110,000 overdose deaths last year, with more than two-thirds linked to the synthetic opioid.

He noted that the issue of synthetic drugs – which can be created in a room no larger the stage he was on – was different from the plant-based drug trade that preceded it. That’s because the plant-based trade took “a pretty large-scale enterprise in order to cultivate the crops, bring them to market”.

Blinken said the problem was global in reach, with criminal organizations “exploiting gaps in interconnected systems to bring new drugs to new places in new ways”. Blinken pointed to tramadol in Africa, to fake Captagon pills in the Middle East and to ketamine as well as amphetamines in Asia.

“This crisis has an immeasurable cost,” Blinken said.

It has devastated families. It’s devastated communities. It’s also been overwhelming to our public health and criminal justice systems.

The diplomat said the US will name an envoy on the issue, introduce a resolution highlighting the global health and security threat of synthetic drugs, and – alongside the UN office on drugs and crime – partner with tech companies to deny traffickers access to online platforms used to market synthetic drugs. He said:

I have to tell you that as the parent of young children, I’m terrified – terrified at the prospect that they will encounter what seems to be an innocent little pill and that in its small size, has death written all over it.