Guterres has his door open to meet Netanyahu during the General Assembly

United Nations, Aug 27 (EFE).- UN Secretary General António Guterres said today, through his spokesperson, that his door is wide open for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the United Nations General Assembly to be held this September.

“The door of the Secretary General is wide open for every head of state who comes. And every year that the Prime Minister (Netanyahu) has come to New York, he has met with the Secretary General. I have no reason to believe that there will not be a meeting,” said the spokesman for the Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, on Tuesday.

Asked about the significance of the non-meeting between Netanyahu and Guterres – who has been highly critical of the Jewish state’s siege of the Gaza Strip following the Hamas attack on October 7 – Dujarric simply replied that “it would not be a reflection of what happened in the past.”

This month, Israel’s new ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, had a tense meeting with Guterres after the Hebrew representative attacked the organization in his speech presenting his credentials.

“I hope that the UN will provide the moral clarity necessary to confront the evils we (Israel) face. I am committed to representing my country, to showing the true face of Israel and to pushing back against the lies and hypocrisy that we unfortunately have to deal with here in this building,” Dannon said in the presence of Guterres.

To which the Secretary-General responded that it is “extremely important for the UN to have an objective relationship with Israel.”

Israel has even called, through its foreign minister, for Guterres’ resignation, accusing him of anti-Israeli bias, especially after the Secretary-General stated on October 25 before the Security Council that Hamas’ attacks “did not come out of nowhere, but rather as a result of 57 years of occupation” of Palestinian lands by Israel.

For Israel, this served as justification for the Hamas attack on October 7, and Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, cancelled a meeting he had scheduled with Guterres at UN headquarters that same day.

.