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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the 69th United Nations General Assembly at United Nations Headquarters
The U.S. must think twice before pulling funding from the United Nations (UN) and sending the interngovernmental organization into irrelevance, the EU ambassador to the UN said on Friday.
Pointing to his experience as a former ambassador to the U.S., João Vale de Almeida, described the current debate in Washington D.C. surrounding the future of the country’s commitment to the UN as only the starting point.
“Congress will have a lot to say. There are voices in Congress that have different views from the administration on this. The debate is on, it’s a legitimate debate, a democratic one which we respect,” Vale de Almeida told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Friday, speaking from the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum.
“Our message to the Americans is to say: Think twice before making the UN irrelevant by defunding it,” he added.
Far from painting the ongoing debate as unequivocally negative, the ambassador said he believed that the American budgetary procedure would generate positive ideas to make the UN a more efficient and effective place.
“We have new threats, new challenges, new actors…in a world like this I don’t think any single country alone, in isolation, can find solutions to all these problems. We need a multilateral solution,” the Portuguese diplomat argued.
