Angolan President João Lourenço warned on Wednesday, in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, that the international community was in danger of being accused of treating conflicts in Europe differently, to the detriment of others in the Middle East or Africa.

He called for an urgent reform of the UN Security Council and recalled that Africa has made great progress.

Quoted by VOA, João Lourenço acknowledged that the war between Russia and Ukraine "should deserve our full attention and the urgency of putting an immediate end to it, given the levels of human and material destruction there, the risk of an escalation into a conflict of major proportions on a global scale and the impact of its harmful effects on energy and food security", But he stressed that "the international community runs the risk of being accused of treating the conflict in Europe differently, to the detriment of others, because they are in the Middle East or Africa, where the conflict in Sudan is just as deadly and destructive as the one in Ukraine".

However, this conflict in Sudan, according to Lourenço, "deserves less coverage in the international media and less attention from the major decision-making centers on world peace and security".

In his speech, the Angolan President highlighted his country's role in building peace, harmony and national reconciliation, in order to resolve the conflicts plaguing the African continent, with special emphasis on what is happening in the DRC, "where we believe it will be possible to build a basis of trust between the belligerents," however, warned that these efforts to contain the spread of terrorism and other destabilizing actions "entail financial costs that our countries are not always able to bear and which, therefore, can compromise the success of the peacemaking operations that are carried out and dash the hopes that are nurtured around these processes".

João Lourenço warned that, in the face of the coups d'état that have taken place, these new powers "should not be rewarded with the possibility of sharing the same political stages with us, otherwise we would be sending out the wrong message, contrary to the principles we stand for".

In this regard, the Angolan head of state went further and said that "we are increasingly convinced of the existence of an invisible hand interested in the destabilization of our continent, only concerned with the expansion of its sphere of influence, which we know does not bring the necessary guarantees for the economic and social development of African countries".

In his long speech, the Angolan President stressed that in recent decades, Africa has witnessed transformations that have galvanized changes with an impact on future generations.

"Many African countries have resolved conflicts, invested what they could in socio-economic development and promoted the education of their citizens, making them more informed and willing to contribute to the economic and social development of their respective countries," continued Lourenço, who also pointed out that democratic transitions have become regular and the institutions that are essential for consolidating democracy have become more active and therefore more capable of sustaining and solidifying the democratic achievements made in our nations.