The Lighter Side of Politics at the UN General Assembly

by Thalif Deen (united nations)Friday, September 11, 2026Inter Press Service UNITED NATIONS, September 11 (IPS) - When over 130 world leaders arrive in New York for the high-level segment of the General Assembly next week– it will be rare to hear hard-hitting, headline-grabbing political statements from the podium. The speeches before the 193-member General Assembly, and UN press briefings that occasionally follow, are mostly long-winded and monotonously boring. The exceptions, however, are rare.When Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi visited the UN in September 2009, a report in the London Guardian said he “grabbed his 15 minutes of fame at the UN building in New York and ran with it. He ran with it so hard he stretched it to an hour and 40 minutes, six times longer than his allotted slot, to the dismay of UN organizers”. Gaddafi fully lived up to his reputation for eccentricity, bloody-mindedness and extreme verbiage, as he tore up a copy of the UN charter in front of startled delegates, accused the Security Council of being an al-Qaida like terrorist body, called for George Bush and Tony Blair to be put on trial for the Iraq war, demanded $7.7 trillion in compensation for the ravages...