US President Joe Biden spoke tonight (Thursday) for the first time since taking office on foreign policy he intends to promote and addressed the burning issues on the US State Department’s agenda.
“In the last two weeks I have spoken with the leaders of many of our closest friends – Canada, Mexico, Britain, Germany, France, NATO, Japan, South Korea and Australia – to begin to re-formulate the habits of cooperation and reconstruction of the remnants of four years of Neglect and abuse, “Biden said.
“We are going to rebuild our alliances. We will rejoin the world and take on the enormous challenges we face in tackling the epidemic, in tackling global warming, and once again we will stand for democracy and human rights around the world,” he said. “We are a country that does great things and our diplomacy makes that possible.”
Biden signs first orders as US president at White House (Photo: Reuters)
Biden claimed to have told Russian President Vladimir Putin that “the days when the US ‘slipped’ on Russian activities are over.”
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He later referred to China, calling it “our biggest competitor” and saying that “the United States is willing to work with China provided it is in our best interests.” He said: “Confronting the economic abuses in China, we will oppose its aggressive course of action to fight China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property and world governance.”
The president also referred to the military coup in Myanmar and said that “the Burmese army should give up the force it seized and immediately release the arrested leaders, lawyers and activists”. He added that “force must not be used to erase the result of a credible election.”
Biden later declared that “the war in Yemen must come to an end,” announced the end of all American support for offensive operations in Yemen and said he would appoint an emissary to focus on the long-running conflict. He called the conflict “a war that created a humanitarian and strategic disaster,” explaining that “the United States will play a more active and involved role” at the end of the war. However, Biden also made it clear that the United States “will continue to help and support Saudi Arabia.”
Biden has also announced his intention to increase the number of refugees entering the United States to 125,000, after years of a historic slump in the Trump administration. Biden also said he would approve an execution order that would restore the U.S. refugee settlement plan, which he said was “badly damaged.” “Moral leadership on refugee issues has been a bipartisan point of agreement for so many decades,” he noted.
In conclusion, the President also announced a presidential memorandum on the protection of the rights of the LGBT community around the world, out of “his deep commitment to these issues, both here in the United States and everywhere around the world.”