MIDDLE EAST

At U.N., World Leaders Spar Over Fate of Syria

By GARDINER HARRIS and SOMINI SENGUPTASEPT. 28, 2015

Watch live as President Obama, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and several other world leaders address the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

UNITED NATIONS — The leaders of the United States and Russia traded blunt criticisms on Monday at the United Nations, essentially blaming each other for the catastrophic war in Syria and the refugee crisis it helped to spawn.

The speeches of President Obama, followed more than an hour later by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, dominated the opening of the annual General Assembly of world leaders.

Mr. Obama made a forceful defense of diplomacy but also castigated Russia by name multiple times in his speech for its defense of the Syrian government, its takeover of Crimea and its actions supporting Ukrainian rebels.

“Dangerous currents risk pulling us back into a darker, more disordered world,” Mr. Obama said.

Those currents include major powers that want to ignore international rules and impose order through force of military power, he said.

“In accordance with this logic, we should support tyrants likeBashar al-Assad who drops barrel bombs to massacre innocent civilians because the alternative is surely worse,” he said in comments that seemed to be aimed directly at Mr. Putin.

In what amounted to a basic rebuttal of Mr. Obama, the Russian leader extolled the Syrian leader, saying that he represented stability and that his forces needed support to fight the Islamic State extremists now threatening the region — even though Mr. Assad’s forces are for the most part fighting rebel groups dedicated to his ouster, not the Islamic State militants.

“We think it’s an enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces who are valiantly fighting terrorism face to face,” Mr. Putin said.

But Mr. Putin, in what appeared to be a step to outmaneuver Mr. Obama on Syria, also spoke of creating “a genuinely broad international coalition” to fight the Islamic State, including a Security Council resolution to “coordinate” military action.

How the United States and its allies will respond to such an idea is unclear. But President François Hollande of France, speaking to reporters later, welcomed the idea of a “broad coalition” and even a Security Council resolution as long as two conditions were met: a stop to the bombings and a “political transition with departure of Assad.” Mr. Hollande did not elaborate on exactly when Mr. Assad would have to leave.

In remarks about foreign Islamic State fighters that seemed clearly aimed at stoking fears in Europe, Mr. Putin said: “We cannot allow these criminals who have already felt the smell of blood to return back home and continue their evil doings. No one wants this to happen, does he?”

Mr. Putin did not hear Mr. Obama speak — the Russian leader had just arrived in New York from Moscow. But the tensions between the two are well known. In a deft bit of diplomacy, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sat in between them during a lunch he hosted for a number of top leaders.

In his toast, Mr. Ban, invoking the saying “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” exhorted his guests to help the United Nations reach the newSustainable Development Goals for eliminating extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin clinked glasses after Mr. Ban’s toast.

In his own toast, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Ban and said “We are facing extraordinary challenges today, ones that test our capacity to work together.”

Later in the afternoon Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin posed for photographers before a long-awaited private meeting between the two, which lasted for 95 minutes. They shook hands at the start but made no comments, and the details of their discussions were not immediately disclosed.

In his earlier speech, Mr. Obama also chided China for its expansions in the South China Sea and Iran for its support of Mr. Assad, as well as the broader anti-American messages that emanate from the Iranians.

“Chanting ‘Death to America’ does not create jobs, or make Iran more secure,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama said that he was realistic, but he said realism had to take into account the brutality of the Assad government in Syria, where war has raged for more than four years.

“Let’s remember how this started,” Mr. Obama said of the Syria conflict. “Assad reacted to peaceful protest by escalating repression and killing and in turn created the environment for the current strife.”

Such violence makes it impossible for the vast majority of Syria’s population to accept Mr. Assad as their leader, Mr. Obama said.

Similarly, Mr. Obama said, a fidelity to international rules required that the United States respond forcefully to Russia’s intervention in Crimea and Ukraine. He said that the United States had few economic interests in the region and understood the long history that Russia had with Crimea and Ukraine.

“But we cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated.” He added: “That’s the basis of the sanctions that the United States and our partners imposed on Russia. It’s not a desire to return to the Cold War.”

Mr. Obama told the international body that he commands the most powerful military force on the planet. But no matter how powerful its military or strong its economy, the United States could not solve the world’s problems on its own, he said.

He pointed to the war in Iraq where, despite sending more than 100,000 troops and spending trillions of dollars, the United States was unsuccessful in stabilizing the country.

Mr. Obama extolled the diplomatic course in which the United States and other world powers had successfully negotiated a nuclear agreement with Iran. And, in one of the first lines to yield cheers, he said that the United States had finally acknowledged that its posture toward Cuba had been wrong and that under his watch, diplomatic relations had been restored.

“As these contacts yield progress, I’m confident that our Congress will inevitably lift an embargo that should not be in place anymore,” he said to cheers. “Change won’t come overnight to Cuba but I’m confident that openness not coercion will support the reforms and better the life that the Cuban people deserve.”

Mr. Obama made a forceful case for democracy and pointed out that “dictatorships are unstable.”

“You can jail your opponents but you can’t imprison ideas,” he said.

President Xi Jinping of China, speaking later in the day, reiterated what he called the Chinese priority of peace and stability for its economic development. He also demonstrated China’s enormous financial influence by announcing a $1 billion fund for the United Nations, and said his country would create a permanent standby peacekeeping contingent of 8,000 police and troops in case it is needed by the world body.

A Syrian boy receiving treatment at a makeshift hospital after reported airstrikes by government forces in the rebel-held area of Douma, Syria, this month.CreditAbd Doumany/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Despite a swooning Russian economy and Western condemnation of Russia’s takeover of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine, Mr. Putin seems to have surprised the Obama administration with an intelligence-sharing alliance with Iraq, Syria and Iran about the Islamic State militant group that occupies parts of Syria and Iraq.

The Russians and Americans even squabbled in recent days over who asked whom for the meeting between the two presidents.

Mr. Putin has said that Mr. Assad is a vital bulwark against the Islamic State; Mr. Obama has said that Mr. Assad must leave before the conflict in Syria can be resolved.

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, in his speech, offered to help to “bring about democracy” in the two conflicts where it has influence, in Syria and Iran, even as he signaled his support for the Russian notion of a Security Council resolution.

“We propose that the fight against terrorism be incorporated into a binding international document and no country be allowed to use terrorism for the purpose of intervention in the affairs of other countries,” Mr. Rouhani said.

Mr. Obama was the first in a line of speakers from the big powers scheduled to speak at the 70th annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, where the Syria conflict and its consequences — the spread of Islamic State jihadism and the surge of refugees into Europe — were dominant themes.

In opening the General Assembly, Mr. Ban struck a somber tone, asserting that: “Inequality is growing, trust is fading, and impatience with leadership can be seen and felt far and wide.”

The remarks by Mr. Ban, who is approaching his last year as the secretary general, were unusually pointed.

He called to leaders to not stay in power beyond their constitutional terms in office, pressed permanent members of the Security Council to put aside their divisions, called explicitly for an “end to bombings” in Yemen, and named the five countries that, as he said, “hold the key” to peace in Syria: Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey.

Mr. Ban said 100 million civilians are in need of aid, for which the United Nations has pleaded for $20 billion. He rebuked the rich for not giving more, giving examples: One third of what the organization needs for Syria and Iraq has been received and for Gambia, whose children are among the hungriest in the world, nothing has come in.

He stepped up his criticism of countries that shut their borders to refugees. “I urge Europe to do more,” reminding the Continent’s leaders that “after the Second World War it was Europeans seeking assistance.”

He marked two pieces of good news. He praised the nuclear pact that the world powers reached with Iran. And with some relief, he noted that the world had come together to stop the Ebola virus from spreading.

President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, who was the first to speak, scolded those countries that have tried to prohibit refugees fleeing conflicts in the Middle East, pointing out that Brazil hosts Syrians and Haitians now as it opened the doors to Europeans and Asians a century ago. “In a world where goods, capital, data and ideas flow freely, it is absurd to impede the free flow of people,” she said.