GENEVA (Reuters) – Israel’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was not fit to head the global body, saying he had not done enough to condemn militant group Hamas and was too close to Iran.
His comments, made at a press conference inside the U.N. building in Geneva, represent an intensification of Israel’s criticism of the global body in the same week that the latter mourned the killing of more than 100 of its staff in Gaza.
“Guterres does not deserve to be the head of the United Nations,” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said at a press conference in Geneva where he is meeting with the World Health Organization and International Red Cross leaders alongside the relatives of Israeli hostages.
“I think that Guterres like all the free nations should say clearly and loudly: free Gaza from Hamas. Everyone said Hamas is worst than ISIS. Why can he not say it?” he said.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; editing by Matthias Williams)
