"It is time to leave the call of violence and the politics of division behind," he told the United Nations General Assembly, "On so many issues, we face a choice between the promise of the future, or the prisons of the past. We cannot afford to get it wrong. We must seize this moment." He spoke personally of Chris Stevens, the Arabic-speaking US ambassador to Libya who died in Benghazi, as "the best of America", a man who "built bridges across oceans and cultures" and was "deeply invested" in the international co-operation that the United Nations represents.