UN chief says lack of accountability on UN staff killings in Gaza 'unacceptable'

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A lack of accountability for the killing of United Nations staff and humanitarian aid workers in the Gaza Strip is "totally unacceptable," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Reuters in a wide-ranging interview on Wednesday.

Guterres also said that establishing a U.N. peacekeeping force would not be the "best solution" for Haiti, where armed gangs have taken over much of the capital and expanded to surrounding areas, fueling a humanitarian crisis with mass displacements, sexual violence and widespread hunger.

Ahead of the annual meeting of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly later this month, Guterres summed up the past year as "very tough, very difficult."

It has been dominated by the war in Gaza, which began just two weeks after leaders left New York following last year's assembly when Palestinian Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages in a cross-border rampage into Israel, according to Israeli tallies.

Describing Israel's retaliation against Hamas in Gaza - where local health officials say some 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began - Guterres said there have been "very dramatic violations of the international humanitarian law and the total absence of an effective protection of civilians."

"What's happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable," he said.

The Israeli military says it takes steps to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and that at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities in Gaza are militants. It accuses Hamas of using Palestinian civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.

Nearly 300 humanitarian aid workers, more than two-thirds of them U.N. staff, have also been killed during the conflict, according to the U.N. Guterres said there should be an effective investigation and accountability for their deaths.

"We have courts, but we see that the decisions of courts are not respected, and it is this kind of limbo of accountability that is totally unacceptable and that requires also a serious a serious reflection," Guterres said.

The top U.N. court - the International Court of Justice - said in July that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and settlements is illegal and should be withdrawn. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly is likely to vote next week on a draft resolution that would give Israel a six-month deadline to do so.

Guterres said he has not spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - who has long accused the U.N. of being anti-Israel - since the deadly Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7 last year. The pair met in person at the U.N. a year ago and Guterres said he would do so again - if Netanyahu asked.

"I have not talked to him because he didn't pick up my phone calls, but I have no reason not to speak with him," Guterres said. "So if he comes to New York and he asks to see me, I will be very glad to see him."

When asked if Netanyahu planned to meet with Guterres on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said that Netanyahu's schedule hasn't been finalized yet.

HAITI 'SCANDAL'

Guterres' described the current state of the world as "chaotic." He said the conflict in Gaza and Russia's war in Ukraine were "stuck with no peaceful solutions in sight."

When asked about Western accusations that North Korea and Iran are now providing Russia with weapons, Guterres said: "Any expansion of war in Ukraine is an absolutely dramatic development."

Iran has rejected the Western accusations, while North Korea has denied the allegations against it. U.N. sanctions monitors said in April that debris from a missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Jan. 2 was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile.

In Haiti, a U.N.-backed international force has been slow to deploy - after Haiti asked for help in 2022 - and lacks funds. The United States wants the U.N. Security Council to ask the U.N. for a plan to transition the force into a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

"I don't think peacekeeping is the best solution in a situation like this ... peacekeeping means to keep the peace, and that's not exactly the situation we have Haiti," Guterres said. "I find it a scandal that it has been so difficult to mobilize funds for such a dramatic situation."

TRUMP LOOMS

Guterres' first five-year term as secretary-general coincided with the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump, who cut funding to the international body, calling it weak and incompetent. Trump is again the Republican president nominee and will face off against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.

"We are ready to work in all circumstances in defense of the values of the (founding U.N.) charter and of the values of the U.N.," Guterres said when asked if the world body had a contingency plan for a possible second Trump administration.

During his first term in office Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, an international pact to fight climate change, and Trump's campaign said he would do it again if he wins in November. The U.S. is currently a full participant in the accord after President Joe Biden swiftly rejoined in 2021.

"It will survive. But, of course, it will probably survive severely undermined," Guterres said of a second withdrawal from the pact by a potential Trump administration. Guterres has long pushed for stronger action to fight climate change.

With abortion rights a key topic in the U.S. election, Guterres said the U.S. voice was "obviously very important" at the United Nations when it came to the issue of women's sexual and reproductive rights as well as health.

Under Trump's presidency, the U.S. opposed long-agreed international language on women's sexual and reproductive rights and health in U.N. resolutions over concern that it would advance abortion rights.

Trump also cut funding in 2017 for the U.N. Population Fund because his administration said it "supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization." The U.N. said that was an inaccurate perception.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, editing by Deepa Babington)