UNITED NATIONS – The Bush administration sought to secure a positive legacy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict yesterday with a UN Security Council resolution that was the first in nearly five years, diplomats said.
A two-page resolution, which passed 14-0 with Israel’s enemy Libya abstaining, declared that US-led talks between the Israelis and Palestinians were “irreversible”.
The United States and Russia, which have clashed in recent months over Russia’s invasion of Georgia, together drafted the resolution, the council’s first on the Middle East conflict since May 2004.
US officials said the point of the resolution was to endorse the goals of talks on Palestinian statehood launched in November 2007 by the administration of President George Bush in Annapolis, Maryland, while avoiding specific disagreements.
The text only indirectly addresses Israeli and Palestinian complaints by urging them to avoid “steps that could undermine confidence or prejudice the outcome of the negotiations”.
It recognises progress made in the US-led talks and calls for ”an intensification of diplomatic efforts” to secure a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East”.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed the resolution, but added that he hoped “it will not be added to the archives of other resolutions that have not been implemented so far”.
The US administration had wanted a deal on Palestinian statehood by the end of 2008 but all sides now say that will not happen. The Republican Bush leaves office on January 20th, when Democrat Barack Obama will become US president.
In a speech to the council, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice described the situation in the Middle East as catastrophic when Mr Bush took over from Bill Clinton in 2001.
By 2007 “it was clear to all that there was no alternative to President Bush’s vision of a state of Palestine and a state of Israel”, she said.
UN diplomats said the Bush administration, unpopular in the Arab world, hoped the resolution would help secure a positive legacy for its Middle East policies and counter criticism over the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
“Obviously Ms Rice is thinking about how they will be remembered,” said a senior western diplomat close to recent talks on the Middle East hosted by the United Nations.
British foreign secretary David Miliband said the lack of a peace deal so far did not mean the Annapolis talks failed.
“The Annapolis process has not delivered a Palestinian state but the absence of an Annapolis process would have left us much worse off,” he said.
Libyan UN ambassador Giadalla Ettalhi criticised the text for not condemning Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, which he described as “basically a crime against humanity”.
Mr Ettalhi had wanted the resolution to mention several Palestinian complaints, including the blockade of the Gaza Strip and Israeli settlement in Palestinian areas.
Libya is the only Arab state now serving on the council. – (Reuters)