President Trump unveiled his Board of Peace charter that created “peace in the Middle East” and vowed to end more wars during a ceremony in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.
Trump opened his remarks by calling the ceremony a “very exciting day.”
“We have Peace in the Middle East, no one thought that was possible,” Trump said. “We settled eight wars and another is coming as well, you know what that is,” Trump said, teasing the ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“Today the world is a safer, richer and much more peaceful place than it was one year ago.”
Trump, who will chair the board, was joined by dozens of world leaders from 19 other countries, including Argentina, Bahrain, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Hungary, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Mongolia.
“Now we have one of the most important meetings of what is known as the board of peace.”
Trump said that the Board of Peace will work with the United Nations.
The Trump-chaired Board of Peace originally was conceptualized in September as part of the president’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, which special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner put forward to end the two-year Israel-Hamas conflict.
“If Hamas doesn’t do what they say they will do, they were born with rifles in their hands. But they have to give up their weapons. If they don’t do that, it’s totally the end of them,” Trump said.
A resolution blessing the board’s role in supervising a transitional Palestinian government and an international peacekeeping force was ratified by the United Nations in November.
As invites went out to countries this month, Trump has floated the idea of the Board of Peace greatly expanding its original mission and supplanting the UN as the arbiter of world conflicts.
“It’s going to get a lot of work done that the United Nations should have done,” Trump told reporters Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland.
Despite its name, warmongering Russian President Vladimir Putin is among those to accept an invite to the board, which Trump explained as an asset rather than a liability.
“Yeah, I have some controversial people on it, but these are people that get the job done. These are people that have tremendous influence. If I put all babies on the board, it wouldn’t be very much,” he said.
The United Kingdom announced it would not be joining the board right away because of concerns with Putin joining, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC.
“We won’t be one of the signatories today because this is a legal treaty that raises much broader issues,” she said.
“And we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something that’s talking about peace when we’ve still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be commitment to peace in Ukraine.”
