STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
World leaders are gathering at the United Nations in New York this week.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Amid high security, they'll meet each other in a glittering city to talk about parts of the world that do not glitter at all. Samantha Power, the Biden administration's lead official on aid, assessed the situation.
SAMANTHA POWER: With greater displacement, more prospect of famine than we have seen in generations and the significant risk of escalating violence in parts of the world like the Middle East, you know, this is an incredibly important week.
INSKEEP: Which NPR's Michele Kelemen will be covering as she has annually for years, Michele, good morning.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: So what did Ambassador Power say the United States intends to do about all the problems she described?
KELEMEN: Well, this is President Biden's swansong speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, but the high level week isn't just about these speeches. It's really about the meetings on the sidelines to try to push forward diplomacy. You heard Power talk about the need for that in Gaza and the escalating war between Israel and Hezbolllah and Lebanon. That will likely overshadow everything, especially if as expected Israel's Prime Minister comes here midweek. But there's, you know, a lot of other conflicts that the Biden administration wants to highlight. There's Haiti and the slow efforts to get gang violence under control and get that country back on a path to elections. And there is, of course, Sudan, which is what she was talking about with that famine.
INSKEEP: Oh, OK, well, let's talk about that one then. What does the administration intend to do there with what is described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis? Not as many headlines as some others, but considered the worst.
KELEMEN: Yeah. I mean, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and others involved in the diplomacy did manage to get some promises to open up aid routes in Sudan, but Samantha Power says that's really just not enough.
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POWER: There is no way to humanitarian assistance our way out of this crisis. The only way in an enduring way to get out of this crisis, the only way civilians will have access to food going forward in a reliable way for the end of the war.
KELEMEN: The end of the war. And that means getting the Sudanese armed forces and a paramiltary known as the RSF to negotiate. And the trouble is, Steve, there's just a lot of other countries that are fueling this crisis. The United Arab Emirates is one. They're backing the RSF, and Biden administration officials have been quietly pressing the UAE to cut it out, to stop that. The U.N. General Assembly is really a chance to get all these leaders and foreign ministers together to work on these solutions, and that's, you know, one area where they hope to make some progress.
INSKEEP: You know, when I heard her say, there's no way to humanitarian assistance our way out of this crisis, it occurred to me that that could apply to a lot of places.
KELEMEN: Yeah, including Gaza.
INSKEEP: Yeah, yeah, to say the least. And then there's Ukraine. What is the administration likely to say about Ukraine?
KELEMEN: Well, the focus is really going to be on planning to help Ukraine get through another winter of war, how to protect critical infrastructure from Russian attacks. There's a meeting about that today. There's also a security council meeting this week, but very little gets done there. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is coming, and he's going to present what he's calling his plan for victory. But he's been trying to rally more support around the world to end the war in a way that preserves Ukraine's territorial integrity. Russia is a permanent security council member. It does have outsized influence at the U.N. and veto power, so really not much gets done there.
INSKEEP: NPR's Michele Kelemen, thanks so much.
KELEMEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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