President Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations' top official
on Monday he would seek full U.N. membership for a Palestinian state, a move
the United States and Israel warn could deal a devastating blow to hopes for
resuming peace negotiations.
Abbas told U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon he would press ahead with plans to ask on Friday
for a Security Council vote on Palestinian membership. Washington has
threatened to veto any such move.
Ban told Abbas he would
forward on to the Security Council any application submitted, and called for
the Israelis and the Palestinians to resume talks "within a legitimate and
balanced framework," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
The Palestinian crisis has
overshadowed this week's meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and sparked
hectic talks aimed at averting a confrontation which carries risks for the
Palestinians, Israel and the United States.
Senior diplomats from the
United States, Russia,
the European Union and the United Nations -- the so-called Quartet of Middle
East mediators -- are meeting throughout the week in hopes of finding a way
forward.
The Quartet has for months
been trying to put together guidelines for future peace talks, thus far without
result.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has offered to launch direct negotiations, but has not made
any concession on key issues that the Palestinians say prevent the talks from
resuming.
RISKY MOVES
Abbas, speaking to reporters
on his plane to New York, acknowledged it could have repercussions for his
Palestinian Authority, the fragile government-in-waiting which depends on
international financial aid for its survival in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
"We decided to take this
step and all hell has broken out against us," he said, adding that he
would not be swayed.
"From now until I give
the speech, we have only one choice: going to the Security Council. Afterwards,
we will sit and decide," he said.
The White House underscored
its threat to veto any Palestinian move at the Security Council, and said it
would focus on trying to nudge the two sides back to negotiations.
"We've made our position
clear, which is that we oppose actions to achieve a Palestinian state through
the United Nations," Obama's deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes
told reporters.
Rhodes said Obama had no
meeting planned with Abbas while they are both in New York, but said there was
always the possibility of a change in the schedule.
TALKING ABOUT TALKS
U.S.-backed talks between
Abbas and Netanyahu collapsed nearly a year ago when the Palestinians pulled
out after Israel declined to extend a partial moratorium on Jewish settlement
building in the West Bank.
The two sides remain divided
on borders, the status of Jerusalem, the future of Palestinian refugees and
whether Israel should be acknowledged as a Jewish state.
The Palestinians say they will
not resume talks unless the moratorium is reinstated. Israel says talks should
resume without preconditions with the aim of producing two states.
The Palestinian decision to go
to the United Nations has caused consternation in Washington, where some U.S.
lawmakers say they will try to cut the roughly $500 million in U.S. aid per
year to the Palestinians if they refuse to back down.
The Palestinian Authority's
central bank chief warned this could doom current efforts at self-government.
"Really, the risk of PA collapse is very real under the financial
strain," Jihad al-Wazir told Reuters.
Saudi Arabia on Monday said it would pay the
Palestinian Authority $200 million, which could help in the short term but
would not fully replace lost U.S. funding.
A SECOND ROUTE
With little hope of success in
the Security Council, the Palestinians may ask the U.N. General Assembly to
upgrade their standing from an "entity" to "a non-member
state" -- a move they believe is likely to pass with support from at least
126 members of the 193-member body.
Abbas is scheduled to meet
French President Nicholas Sakrozy on Tuesday, and met on Monday with French
Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who warned that both Israel and the Palestinians
were courting disaster.
"The only solution is to
resume talks," Juppe said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations
in New York in comments also echoed by Britain.
A U.S. Security Council veto
would carry diplomatic risks for Washington, which could find itself isolated
alongside its longtime ally Israel during a period of unprecedented political
turmoil across the Middle East.
It would also likely boost
tensions between the Palestinians and Netanyahu's government, which has already
seen traditionally steady ties with key neighbors Egypt and Turkey deteriorate quickly, adding to
regional uncertainty.
Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton on Monday urged Turkey's foreign minister not to do anything to worsen
Ankara's ties to Jerusalem, which lurched into crisis after a deadly 2010
Israeli raid on a Turkish aid flotilla.
Clinton, asked if there was
any progress on the broader Palestinian impasse, said work continued.
"It's early in the week.
A lot of people are not even here yet and there's been an enormous number of
meetings ... But I think that everyone knows our position, and obviously our
goal is a two-state solution and that's what we're going to keep working
toward," she said.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Bases, Tom Perry, Matt
Spetalnick, Arshad
Mohammed; writing byAndrew Quinn;
editing by Mohammad
Zargham)
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Source : Reuters
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