Meeting his Lebanese counterpart in New York, Wang said: “We pay close attention to developments in the region, especially the recent explosion of communications equipment in Lebanon, and firmly oppose indiscriminate attacks against civilians.”
Last week, a series of coordinated communications device blasts across Lebanon killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000.
And on Monday, Israeli air strikes killed 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, and wounded 1,645 others in the country, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Wang acknowledged the strikes, saying China “strongly condemns any violation of the basic norms governing international relations.”
“No matter how the situation changes, we will always stand on the side of justice, on the side of our Arab brothers, including Lebanon,” Wang told Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib.
“Armed force does not represent truth, and might only undermines peace,” Wang said.
“Countering violence with violence will not solve the problems in the Middle East and will only lead to an even greater humanitarian disaster,” he added.
China also urged its citizens to leave Israel on Sunday as tensions with Lebanon grew.
China has repeatedly called for peace talks to resolve the crisis in Gaza.
In July, the country brokered a “national unity” deal between Hamas, Fatah, and other Palestinian organizations to rule Gaza together after the war.
“I can say we are almost in a full-fledged war,” Borrell said ahead of a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.
“We’re seeing more military strikes, more damage, more collateral damage, more victims,” he added as Lebanese authorities said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 492 people on Monday, including 35 children.
The strikes marked the deadliest day of cross-border violence since the Gaza war began.
Israel said it killed a “large number” of Hezbollah militants when it hit about 1,300 sites in southern and eastern Lebanon, including a “targeted strike” in Beirut.
“Everybody has to put all their capacity to stop this,” Borrell said, pressing for a solution in New York.
United States: Escalating clashes between Israel and Hezbollah threatened to overshadow US President Joe Biden’s final appearance at the UN’s signature annual event on Tuesday as diplomats scrambled to avert an all-out regional war.
The gathering of dozens of world leaders, the high point of the diplomatic calendar, comes a day after Israeli air strikes on Lebanon killed more than 490 people, according to local authorities.
As world leaders gathered in Manhattan Monday for the annual flurry of speeches and face-to-face diplomacy, UN Security Council member France called for an emergency meeting on the crisis engulfing the Middle East.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said he was “gravely alarmed” as focus shifted from Gaza to Lebanon, and the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell warned “we are almost in a full-fledged war.”
Israel’s closest ally the United States again warned against a full-blown ground invasion of Lebanon, with a senior US official promising to bring “concrete” ideas for de-escalation to the UN this week.
It is unclear what progress can be made to defuse the situation in Lebanon as efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, which Israel has relentlessly pounded since October 2023, have come to nothing.
“Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan will be the dominant issues,” said Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group think tank, adding he expected many leaders to “warn that the UN will become irrelevant globally if it cannot help make peace.”
More than 100 heads of state and government are scheduled to speak during the UN’s centerpiece event, which will run until Monday.
Since last year’s annual gathering, when Sudan’s civil war and Russia’s Ukraine invasion dominated, the world has faced an explosion of crises.
“International challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them,” Guterres warned ahead of the gathering.
The October 7 attack by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Israel and the ensuing violence in the Middle East has exposed deep divisions in the global body.
With Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas expected to address the General Assembly this week, there could be combustible moments.
On Tuesday, representatives of Turkiye, Jordan, Qatar, Iran and Algeria are slated to take the podium to press for a Gaza ceasefire after nearly one year of war.
Ukraine will also be on the agenda Tuesday when President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses a UN Security Council meeting on Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“I invite all leaders and nations to continue supporting our joint efforts for a just and peaceful future,” Zelensky told the UN on Monday.
“Putin has stolen much already, but he will never steal the world’s future.”
It is unclear if the grand diplomatic gathering can achieve anything for the millions mired in conflict and poverty globally.
“Any real diplomacy to reduce tensions will take place behind the scenes,” Gowan said.
“This may be an opportunity for Western and Arab diplomats to have some quiet conversations with the Iranians about the need to stop the regional situation spinning out of control.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani has called for an urgent meeting of Arab leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly over the crisis in Lebanon.
Guterres cautioned against “the possibility of transforming Lebanon (into) another Gaza.”
On Gaza, he said “despite all the diplomatic capacity that we have deployed, nothing has been able to stop the war,” accusing both sides of “procrastinating.”
Syria said it voted against a “Pact for the Future,” which was adopted by a majority of UN member states on Sunday, on the grounds that it does not go far enough in terms of plans to reform the organization.
The pact, which received the backing of 143 of 193 member states in the vote, aims to rebuild trust in the UN and its ability to tackle global crises.
But Qusay Al-Dahhak, Syria’s permanent representative to the UN told delegates attending the “Summit for the Future” at the organization’s headquarters in New York on Monday that its mechanisms and systems need to evolve away from serving the “narrow interests” of a handful of Western states.
He said the brighter future desired by those who backed the pact, one that best serves all member states and their peoples, would only be achieved through “radical change.”
“(This will require) some Western countries to abandon the mentality of the past and their ambitions of hegemony and colonization,” Al-Dahhak said.
Though he did not name any specific Western states, he said that they should “cease attempting to impose their will on other peoples and respect their independent, national choices.”
He denounced the “illegal measures” he said have been taken by the West that have deprived Syrians of their future, undermined their legitimate choices and prevented them from accessing their own national wealth, but said Syrians are nonetheless “determined to move forward and build their own future.”
The US, the EU, Canada, Australia and Switzerland imposed sanctions on Syria in response to the actions of President Bashar Assad and his regime since the start of the civil war in the country in 2011.
Al-Dahhak said his country looks forward to a future based on dialog and diplomacy between nations, and on the promotion of multilateral action and the upholding of the principles of the UN Charter, which he said will not be best served by the pact in its current form.
“Hence the need to take immediate and serious measures to develop multilateral mechanisms and structures and to reinforce them to strengthen re-participation away from the policies of exclusion and the narrow interests of some Western states,” he added.
The envoy also condemned the “ongoing Israeli occupation of Arab territories in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon” and Israel’s continued “acts of aggression, crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing,” which he said amounted to a “grave violation of international law and the principles and purposes of the UN Charter.”
Referencing the pact agreed on Sunday, he said transgressions by Israeli authorities also represent a major obstacle and hinder access to the “common future we all seek.” He said there was a need to unite and intensify the UN efforts to confront Israel’s regional aggression and its occupation of land belonging to other states.
Al-Dahhak also vowed Syria would join other nations in calling for reforms of global financial institutions to “guarantee participation of developing countries in the global economic decision making,” which he said would help to alleviate global debt.
