It's the Brian Laira show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. 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.

For the city, it often gets reported mostly as a traffic jam story,

but of course it's so much more for the whole world. 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

U.N. 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. Let's begin with today's special summit on a two-state solution. Why did France and Saudi Arabia begin a new process to aim for that elusive goal at this time?

This was something that the UN General Assembly mandated about a year ago, and France and Saudi Arabia have been leading the process forward.

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