President Barack Obama will meet Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday to urge him to drop plans to ask the U.N. Security
Council to recognize a Palestinian state despite U.S. and Israeli objections.
The White House said Obama
will meet Abbas at 6 p.m. ET on the sidelines of this week's U.N. General
Assembly session in New York. Obama is also due to meet Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu earlier on Wednesday.
"With both the Israelis
and the Palestinians the president will be able to say very directly why we
believe action at the United Nations is not the way ... to achieve a
(Palestinian) state," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told
reporters.
Abbas has promised to present
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with a membership application on Friday,
setting the stage for a Security Council vote that the United States, one of
five veto-wielding permanent members, says it will block.
The Obama administration and
Israel both say that only direct peace talks can lead to peace with the
Palestinians, who in turn say almost two decades of fruitless negotiation has
left them no choice but to turn to the United Nations.
The drama over the Palestinian
U.N. bid is playing out as Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. leaders all grapple
with the fallout from Arab uprisings that are raising new political tensions
across the Middle East.
Palestinian Foreign Minister
Riyad al-Malki said he thought at least nine of the 15 members of the Security
Council would back the Palestinian bid and urged the United States to get out
of the way.
"We're working toward it
and I think we'll manage it," Malki told reporters. "We hope the
United States will revise its position and be on the side of the majority of
nations or countries who want to support the Palestinian right to have self
determination and independence."
A U.S. veto in the Security
Council would still block approval even if most other members agree --
something that is far from certain.
But securing the nine votes
necessary to claim a Security Council majority would allow the Palestinians to
highlight the U.S. veto as an obstacle, increasing the diplomatic risks for
Washington.
It would also raise pressure
on Israel, which despite its offer of direct peace talks has not made any of
the concessions that the Palestinians say would make such talks possible.
NO PROGRESS YET
Senior diplomats from the
United States, Russia,
the European Union and the United Nations -- the Quartet of Middle East
mediators -- are meeting throughout the week but with little sign thus far of a
breakthrough.
The Quartet has been trying
to put together guidelines for future peace talks for months, so far without
result. British Foreign Secretary William Hague acknowledged there had been no
progress.
Even if the Palestinians file
their Security Council application on Friday, an immediate vote is unlikely.
This may allow more time for diplomacy aimed at restarting peace talks, said
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.
"There's a procedure for
dealing with such requests and it can take a few days or weeks more, which
means there is room for other initiatives," Juppe told Europe 1 radio.
"We hope to find a way of
convincing all involved to get back around the negotiating table, and in a
serious fashion."
Highlighting the political
minefield Obama faces on the issue, Republican presidential challenger Rick
Perry blasted the administration over its Middle East policy, saying U.S. peace
efforts had "encouraged the Palestinians to shun direct talks."
Perry's comments were a
reminder that Obama must prepare for what is shaping up as a tough campaign for
re-election in 2012 and cannot afford to alienate Israel's broad support in
Congress and with the American public.
In the West Bank, clashes
broke out as angry Jewish settlers protested against the Palestinian plans --
another sign of growing tensions in the territory that some fear could spin
dangerously out of control.
TOUGH CHOICES
Israel says the U.N. move aims
to delegitimize the Jewish state. The Palestinians say their U.N. bid will open
the door to new peace talks among two sovereign equals.
Direct talks between Israel
and the Palestinians collapsed a year ago after Israel refused to extend a
moratorium on new settlements in areas the Palestinians want for a future
state.
Israel has occupied the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip since the 1967 war, and the two sides are divided on
borders, the status of Jerusalem, the future of Palestinian refugees and
whether Israel should be acknowledged as a Jewish state.
The Palestinians want the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip for their future state, with East Jerusalem as their
capital.
With a U.S. veto certain at
the Security Council, the Palestinians may also ask the U.N. General Assembly
to upgrade them from an "entity" to a "non-member state."
Such a step, they say, would be backed by at least 126 of the assembly's 193
members and give further legitimacy to their claim.
The Palestinian decision to
force a confrontation at the United Nations has cast new doubt over the Obama
administration's effort to harness the "Arab Spring" uprisings to
forge a new set of U.S. relationships in the Middle East.
"A U.S. veto ... will be
seen by the region as once again a double-standard policy of selectively
standing by certain people in the region yearning for freedom, but not
others," said Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister and now
vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment.
(Additional reporting by Lou
Charbonneau, Susan
Cornwell, Tom Perry, Edith Honan,
Matt Spetalnick and Alistair Lyon;
writing by Andrew Quinn;
editing by Christopher
Wilson)
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Source : Reuters
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