President Donald Trump hosted a signing ceremony on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday for the founding members of the Board of Peace, his newly formed organization dedicated to world peace and security.

“We’re going to have peace in the world, and boy, wouldn’t that be a great legacy for all of us,” Trump said in his speech launching the board.

The Board of Peace’s “inaugural resolution,” which Trump signed at the ceremony, is to oversee the demilitarization and reconstruction of Gaza.

On Iran, Trump said that the U.S. bombing in June was because “they were two months from having a nuclear weapon, and we can’t let them have that. Iran does want to talk, and we’ll talk.”  

In addition to the U.S., 19 countries attended the “massive event,” as a Trump administration source characterized it to Jewish Insider: Bahrain, Morocco, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Hungary, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Mongolia.

Members of Trump’s team in Davos — Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, informal advisor Jared Kushner and Josh Gruenbaum, a diplomatic advisor to the board — spent the hours preceding the event working to bring more countries on board.

Some 35 of the 50 invited countries agreed to join the Board of Peace, Reuters reported. Those who did not attend the signing ceremony include Egypt, Vietnam and Belarus and Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog was in Davos on Thursday but did not attend because the Board of Peace is under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remit.

Most Western European countries declined to join the Board of Peace because of its apparent aim to replace the United Nations, as well as Trump’s pressure to turn Greenland over to the U.S. and Russia’s invitation to join.

“Just about every country wants to be a part of” the Board of Peace, Trump said. “We’ll work with many others, including the U.N. … This board has a chance to be one of the most consequential bodies ever created, and it’s my honor to serve as its chairman. … I take it very seriously.”

Though Trump first raised the idea of a Board of Peace as a supervisory body for the Gaza ceasefire reached last year, its charter describes a body concerned with peace worldwide and does not mention Gaza or Israel. 

The charter says that the Board of Peace aims to “promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” 

It also makes clear that the board’s expansive mission was borne of disappointment with past efforts by the U.N., with its preamble “declaring that durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common-sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed … Emphasizing the need for a more nimble and effective international peace-building body.” 

Trump said in his remarks on Thursday that “the U.N. has got tremendous potential, and it has not used it,” following a comment earlier this week that the Board of Peace “might” replace the U.N. U.S. diplomats were instructed to say that the Board of Peace is meant to complement the U.N., not replace it, Bloomberg reported. 

Trump will be the board’s inaugural chairman, a position that does not have an end date and carries executive power, including to invite and remove members, veto decisions, set the agenda and choose a successor. Membership is free for a three-year term, while permanent membership costs $1 billion.

Italy has yet to join the Board of Peace specifically because it may violate its constitution to join a body led by a single foreign leader, in which it does not have equal standing with other countries.

Rubio, Witkoff, Kushner and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair sit on the Board of Peace’s founding Executive Board, and Gruenbaum and Aryeh Lightstone are its diplomatic advisors.

Trump also said in his remarks that Hamas “has to give up their weapons and if they don’t do that, it’s gonna be the end of them. Many countries say we really want to do it.”

The U.S. is “committed to Gaza being fully demilitarized, properly governed and properly rebuilt,” he added. “We’re going to be very successful in Gaza; it’s going to be a great thing to watch.”