The United States President Donald Trump on Thursday launched his Board of Peace, initially designed to cement Gaza’s rocky ceasefire but which he foresees taking a wider role worrying to other global powers, although he said it would work with the United Nations.
“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do. And we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations,” Trump said, adding that the U.N. had great potential that had not been fully utilised.
Trump, who will chair the board, invited dozens of other world leaders to join, saying he wants it to address challenges beyond the stuttering Gaza ceasefire, stirring misgivings that it could undermine the U.N.’s role as the main platform for global diplomacy and conflict resolution.
While regional Middle East powers including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as major emerging nations such as Indonesia, have joined the board, global powers and traditional Western U.S. allies have been more cautious.
Trump says permanent members must help fund with a payment of $1 billion each, and Reuters could not immediately spot any representatives from governments of top global powers or from Israel or the Palestinian Authority at the signing ceremony.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the board’s focus would be on making sure the plan for peace in Gaza was fulfilled but that it could also “serve as an example of what’s possible in other parts of the world”.
GLOBAL ROLE
Apart from the U.S., no other permanent member of the U.N. Security Council – the five nations with the most say over international law and diplomacy since the end of World War Two – has yet committed to join.
Russia said late on Wednesday it was studying the proposal after Trump said it would join. President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was willing to pay $1 billion from frozen U.S. assets in the U.S. “to support the Palestinian people”, state media said.
France declined to join. Britain said on Thursday it was not joining at present. China has not yet said whether it will do so.
The board’s creation was endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution as part of Trump’s Gaza peace plan, and U.N. spokesperson Rolando Gomez said on Thursday that U.N. engagement with the board would only be in that context.
Few of the countries that have signed up for the board are democracies, although Israel, Argentina and Hungary, whose leaders are close allies of Trump and supporters of his approach to politics and diplomacy, have said they will join.