Foreign Minister Penny Wong shakes hands with a Ukrainian diplomat at the UN.
She will warn thattensions over the South China Sea and military build-up in the Indo-Pacific had given rise to “the most confronting circumstances in decades” and would require a greater collective effort to prevent an unwanted war.
“Military power is expanding,but measures to constrain military conflict are not – and there are few concrete mechanisms for averting it,” she was due to tell global leaders on Friday evening (US time),according to an early copy of her speech.
“So it is up to all of us to act to deploy our collective statecraft,our influence,our networks,our capabilities,to minimise the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation to prevent catastrophic conflict. Peace-building today must rise to this challenge.”
The minister’s speech is her second address at UN High-level Week:an annual talkfest where political leaders,diplomats and captains of industry gather along New York’s East River in a bid to solve the problems of the world.
US President Joe Biden was the only leader out of the five veto-wielding,permanent members of the UN Security Council who attended the event this year,prompting renewed questions about the body’s overall influence.
Russian President Vladimir Putin – who has a warrant out for his arrest by the International Criminal Court – and Chinese President Xi Jinping both declined to attend for the second year in a row.