UNITED NATIONS — United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday called for the United States to consider additional exemptions to a 90-day pause on its foreign assistance to “ensure continued delivery of critical development and humanitarian activities.”

Just hours after taking office a week ago, US President Donald Trump announced the pause so foreign aid contributions could be reviewed to see if they align with his foreign policy.

The move risks cutting off billions of dollars of life-saving assistance. The United States is the largest single donor of aid globally. In fiscal year 2023, it disbursed $72 billion in assistance.

Mr. Guterres’ spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the US was one of the UN’s largest contributors of voluntary humanitarian development aid, and that the world body was trying to work out what impact the pause would have.

“We’re extremely appreciative of the generosity the United States has always shown. We want to work together, to assess, to hear and deal with the concerns of the new US administration, while at the same time ensuring that the most vulnerable remain protected,” Mr. Dujarric told reporters.

There was initial confusion among US lawmakers, aid groups and the United Nations over the scope of Trump’s order. That was cleared up on Friday, when the US State Department issued a “stop-work” order for all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, according to a cable seen by Reuters.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio can issue waivers and has given an exemption for emergency food assistance.

“The Secretary-General calls for additional exemptions to be considered to ensure the continued delivery of critical development and humanitarian activities for the most vulnerable communities around the world, whose lives and livelihoods depend on this support,” Mr. Dujarric said.

TOUGHER STANCE
Guterres looks forward to working with the new US administration “on the provision of much needed development support to people grappling with the most difficult challenges confronting the developing world,” Mr. Dujarric said.

Aid and rights groups have also expressed concern about Mr. Trump’s order.

“Any new administration is entitled to review existing foreign aid, but continuing the delivery of important assistance is critical while the review is being conducted,” said Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch.

She said in a statement that US assistance supports medical programs, mine clearance, the protection of human rights defenders and other vulnerable communities, “all of which are at risk without steady funding. “When asked about the aid review, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told Fox News on Monday: “It’s about taking a note of what we’ve been doing and whether or not things need to change and how to best proceed to the future for us… We will not be taken advantage of.”

The pause on US foreign aid is a tougher stance than Trump took during his first term in office between 2017 and 2021, when he threatened the measure.

At the annual UN gathering of world leaders in September 2018, Mr. Trump told the General Assembly that his administration would examine whether countries receiving US aid and protection “also have our interests at heart.”

“Moving forward, we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends,” he said.

However, the US Congress sets the federal government budget and pushed back against Trump’s attempts during his first term to make large cuts to US diplomacy and aid budgets. — Reuters

OSWIECIM, Poland — Auschwitz survivors warned of the dangers of rising antisemitism on Monday, as they marked the 80^th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp by Soviet troops in one of the last such gatherings of those who experienced its horrors.

The ceremony at the site of the camp, which Nazi Germany set up in occupied Poland during World War II to murder European Jews on a huge scale, was attended by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain’s King Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron, Polish President Andrzej Duda and many other leaders.

They did not make speeches, but rather listened for perhaps the last time to those who suffered and witnessed at first hand one of humanity’s greatest atrocities.

Israel, founded for Jews in the shadow of the Holocaust, sent Education Minister Yoav Kisch.

“We see in the modern world today a great increase in antisemitism, and it was antisemitism that led to the Holocaust,” said Marian Turski, 98, who was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 and survived the westward ‘death march’ to Buchenwald in 1945.

“Let’s not be afraid to convince ourselves that we can solve problems between neighbors.”

Retired physician Leon Weintraub, 99, who was separated from his family and sent to Auschwitz in 1944, warned of the dangers of intolerance.

“I ask you to multiply your efforts to counteract the views whose effects we are commemorating today,” he said.

Author and academic Tova Friedman, 86, said “80 years after the liberation, the world is again in crisis.”

“Our Jewish-Christian values have been overshadowed worldwide by prejudice, fear, suspicion and extremism,” she said, “and the rampant antisemitism that is spreading among the nations is shocking.”

Antisemitic incidents have surged in part along with protests against Israel in many parts of Europe, North America and Australia since Israel launched its assault on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza after attacks on Israel by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023.

Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said on Monday that hatred of Jews was rising against the backdrop of that war, adding: “Young people are getting most of their information from social media, and that is dangerous.”

Before the ceremony, which took place in a tent built over the gate to the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, leaders stressed how important it was to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

“The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task, and in so doing we inform our present and shape our future,” King Charles said during a visit to the Jewish Community Center in Krakow.

President Duda told reporters at the camp that “we Poles, on whose land the Germans built this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory.”

That remembrance of crimes committed in the name of Nazi notions of racial superiority has itself become an acutely political issue in recent years with the rise of far-right parties across Europe.

‘HISTORICAL GUILT’
On Saturday, billionaire Elon Musk, high-profile adviser to US President Donald Trump, made a video address to supporters of Germany’s AfD (Alternative fuer Deutschland), which is running second in polls for the Feb. 23 election on a platform that includes playing down historical guilt for the Holocaust.

“Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents,” said Mr. Musk, who himself laid a wreath at Auschwitz a year ago.

The rally prompted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to say that “the words we heard from the main actors of the AfD rally about ‘Great Germany’ and ‘the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes’ sounded all too familiar and ominous.”

More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz, where most had been brought in freight wagons, packed like livestock.

More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.

In all, between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, along with gypsies, sexual minorities, disabled people and others who offended Nazi ideas of racial superiority. — Reuters