REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, UNITED NATIONS - World leaders gather in New York this week to tackle a host of crises: the violence Islamic State militants are wreaking in Iraq and Syria, the exponential spread of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa and deadlocked negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.
There is little hope the 193-nation UN General Assembly will achieve much in the annual five-day marathon of speeches. But on the sidelines, U.S. officials plan to lobby allies for pledges of concrete military assistance to help defeat Islamic State, whose hardline Sunni Islamist fighters have taken over swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said more than 140 heads of state or government will attend the assembly's annual "general debate", which begins on Wednesday and ends Sept. 30. He noted an unusually large number of serious conflicts: in the Middle East, Africa and Ukraine.
"The world is facing multiple crises," Ban told reporters.
"All have featured atrocious attacks on civilians, including children," he said. "All have dangerous sectarian, ethnic or tribal dimensions. And many have seen sharp divisions within the international community itself over the response."
UN officials and delegates say the top issue for Western and Arab leaders is the rampage of Islamic State militants, who are blamed for a wave of sectarian violence, beheadings and massacres of civilians.
"Together, we will address the horrendous violence in Syria and Iraq, where conflict and governance failures have provided a breeding ground for extremist groups," Ban said.
US President Barack Obama is expected to use the UN podium on Wednesday to call for more countries to join his coalition of more than 40 nations to prevent IS from expanding its territory. The United States has been bombing IS targets in Iraq for the past month but has yet to bomb Syria.
In addition to speeches by Obama, Iranian President Rouhani and other high-profile leaders, other important attendees making their UN General Assembly debut this week include Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Ebola crisis
UN member states will also tackle the Ebola crisis in West Africa. Obama and other leaders will also attend a high-level meeting on the exponentially worsening hemorrhagic fever outbreak that has devastated Liberia, Sierra Leone and other countries in the region.
The meeting comes just after the Security Council declared Ebola a "threat to international peace and security" and established the first-ever UN mission dedicated to tackling a public-health threat.
Since the current outbreak was first detected in March, Ebola has infected at least 5,357 people, according to the World Health Organization, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. It has also spread to Senegal and Nigeria. The virus has killed an estimated 2,630 people.
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