Geneva — UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday he was determined to reform the world body and to see a diplomatic surge to overcome obstacles in peace talks. Guterres said the UN was irreplaceable and its actions had reduced suffering. "But I’m also aware of the shortcomings and the failures of the UN," he said. "That’s why I’m totally committed first of all to a surge in diplomacy for peace, to make the UN more effective in trying to address the dramatic multiplication of conflicts that we are witnessing and to put full priority on the prevention of those conflicts," Guterres said. Under Guterres’s predecessor Ban Ki-moon, the UN tried and has so far failed to make peace between warring sides in Syria, Yemen and Libya, while wars in Ukraine, South Sudan, Nigeria and elsewhere have continued to rage unabated. An early test for Guterres will be UN-led talks to reunify Cyprus. Officials from both sides of the divided island, as well as Greece, Turkey and Britain, ope...
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