UNITED NATIONS-Syria's foreign minister told world leaders Saturday that victory against terrorists in his war-ravaged nation "is now within reach" while North Korea's foreign minister said U.S. President Donald Trump's insult to his country makes an attack against the U.S. mainland inevitable.
Global conflicts, threats and challenges dominated the fifth day of the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting, including an impassioned appeal for help from the prime minister of Dominica.
Syria's Walid al-Moualem said his country is "marching steadily" toward the goal of rooting out terrorism.
Russia's military said about two weeks ago that Syrian troops have liberated about 85 percent of the war-torn country's territory from militants, a major turn-around two years after Moscow intervened to lend a hand to its embattled long-time ally.
But the spotlight Saturday was on North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, who said Trump's insult calling the country's leader Kim Jong Un "rocket man" makes "our rocket's visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more."
Trump threatened in his speech to the 193-member world body on Tuesday to "totally destroy" North Korea if provoked. Kim, in an unusual direct statement to the world, responded pledging to take "highest-level" action against the United States.
Ri called the American leader "a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency" with his finger on the "nuclear button."
The annual gathering of presidents, prime ministers and monarchs has taken place against a backdrop of a spate of natural disasters-hurricanes that have ravaged the Caribbean and the United States and a major earthquake in Mexico. Climate change already was a major issue before the leaders but these events magnified the importance of global action.
"Let these extraordinary events elicit extraordinary efforts to rebuild nations sustainably," Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica told the assembly five days after Hurricane Maria swept over his country with 160 mph winds, killing 15 people, flattening homes and destroying roads.
He asked other countries to lend his ravaged nation military equipment that could be used to help rebuild it, saying "our landscape reflects a zone of war" against global warming.