UN Leaders Make Nice In New York
Updated: 6:52am UK, Wednesday 25 September 2013
By Dominic Waghorn, US Correspondent
It's that time of year when the world's leaders descend on Manhattan for their annual get together.
The UN General Assembly, best known for diplomatic dustups and theatrical posturing by flamboyant dictators.
Nikita Khruschev comes to mind, probably bashing the podium with a shoe and Yasser Arafat brandishing a pistol.
If that's your thing, this year will be a disappointment.
I almost walked into Robert Mugabe just now. The Zimbabwean dictator and entourage swept into an elevator barely noticed, not pursued by a single camera.
Was it my imagination or did he seem almost lonely? The last of a dying breed.
Fellow demagogues like Muammar Gaddafi deposed and killed, Hugo Chavez dead, this year's UN panto villain, Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir a no show, chickening out apparently, afraid of war crime charges.
And as for the Iranians who can normally be relied on to stick it to Great Satan and provoke at least a walkout? This year quite the opposite. Making nicey nicey instead with the Americans with what looks like a historic thaw in the offing. Whatever next?
Barack Obama swept into the UN in his normal black limo looking like a man on a date.
For weeks he's been exchanging increasingly flirtatious letters with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.
Friends of both had been talking up chances of the two men meeting briefly in a corridor somewhere. Nothing too serious you understand but a completely casual yet completely choreographed handshake.
In the end, the pair did not meet - US officials said a meeting proved to be too complicated for the Iranians.
At the UN, the US leader talked about "taking a major step down a long road towards a different relationship - one based on mutual interests and mutual respect".
Hassan Rouhani said his country was prepared to engage in stalled negotiations over its disputed nuclear programme and was open to talks with the US "to manage differences".
Enough to make some of America's friends worry things are moving too fast, along with plenty of America's enemies in Tehran, if for different reasons.
This is just the beginning, there are plenty of reasons to be sceptical and it may all come to nothing.
But there's no doubt something has shifted and this year's story here is not about confrontation but rapprochement instead.
They certainly don't make UN General Assemblies like they used to.
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