From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, September 22nd.

This is the week of the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting here in New York.

As many of you know, it happens to be the 80th anniversary

of the UN this year, founded right after World War II, to try to help prevent such conflicts in the

future via contact among world leaders, among the nations of planet Earth. President Trump and

other heads of state will give their speeches beginning tomorrow.

Today there is a round of talks a kind of special summit, they're calling it, on reviving the

idea of a two-state solution in the ever-present Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is decades

older than the UN itself, we might say. Just yesterday, in advance of today's summit, Canada, Australia,

and the UK, Britain, recognized a state of Palestine. The sponsors of today's summit are

France and Saudi Arabia, one Western and one Arab nation, notably, and while they acknowledge

the urgency of dealing with the immediate

crisis in Gaza, they also hope to go beyond it for another shot at resolving the larger

underlying issues. With us to discuss today's session and the week in general is Richard Gowan,

UN director of the International Crisis Group, which describes itself as working to prevent

wars and shape policies that will build a more peaceful world. He has previously worked as a

consultant to several UN departments, the Foreign Affairs offices of Finland and Canada,

and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and he is taught at Columbia and Stanford.

Richard Gowan has written a preview of this week's General Assembly on the website, Just

Security, and Richard, thank you for giving us some time as this very busy week begins for you.

Welcome to WNYC.

Thank you very much for having me on the show.

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