Negroponte raised his hand for killing the resolution (AFP)

NEW YORK, West Bank, March 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The United States killed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel's assassination of the Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

The move drew a wave of criticism against Washington Friday, March 26, with Russia feeling “disappointed” and the Palestinian Authority seeing it as a green light for more Israeli attacks after assassinating the 67-year-old wheelchair-bound Yassin earlier this week.

Late Thursday, a majority of Council members voted for the resolution, but the U.S. employed the veto reserved for permanent members, the BBC News Online said.

The U.S. called the resolution “one-sided”, demanding Palestinian resistance groups be named in it.

The measure was sponsored by lone Arab member Algeria, which said the council was sending the "wrong message" to the world.

Algeria said it seemed the world body was “doomed to fail” when dealing with Middle East issues.

Eleven members approved the resolution - two more than the nine required to pass it - but the U.S. envoy used the veto available only to the five permanent members of the Council.

Three countries - the UK, Germany and Romania - abstained.

The draft resolution condemned “the most recent extrajudicial execution committed by Israel”.

It also condemned “all attacks against any civilians as well as all acts of violence and destruction”.

The ‘extrajudicial execution’ by Israeli security forces of Sheikh Yassin brought tens of thousands of Palestinians out on to the streets in fury and drew condemnations from governments around the world.

‘Wrong Message’

The Palestinian Authority said the U.S. use of veto would “encourage” Israel to pursue its policy of assassinations.

“We really fear that the U.S. veto will be interpreted by Israel as an encouragement to continue down the path of violence, aggression and assassinations," Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Meanwhile, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov said the resolution could have passed unanimously if consultations had been expanded for a few more days before the vote.

“We are disappointed that we failed to reach consensus in the U.N. Security Council on a vote linked to the current dangerous spiral of violence in the Middle East,” Interfax news agency quoted Fedotov as saying.

The backers of the bill probably feel the majority vote in favor of the resolution gives them the high ground, despite its ultimate failure, the BBC correspondent said.

The resolution may now be taken to the 191-member U.N. General Assembly, where the U.S. has no veto.

Unlike resolutions endorsed by the Security Council, the draft would not acquire the force of international law were it passed in the General Assembly, but it would send a strong message.

‘Failed’

Algeria's Ambassador, Abdallah Baali, said the failure of the vote meant "the Security Council is not sending the right message to the world, which has unanimously condemned this crime.

“But it is certainly sending the wrong message to Israel,” he said.

“As if doomed to fail whenever it has to deal with the intractable situation of the Middle East, the Security Council has come to the conclusion once and for all that it has no say in the terrible tragedy that is unfolding in this part of the world”.

Egypt’s permanent representative Ahmed Abu Al-Gheit said the U.S. enforcing veto on the draft came by no means at a nutshell.

It is the fourth recently for Washington to do so, Abul Gheit said in comments carried by Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency.

On October 14, the U.S. vetoed a Syrian-proposed U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for continuing its construction of the separation wall, which snakes through the Palestinian territories in the West Bank.

Negroponte also dismissed the draft as “unbalanced”, although U.S. President George Bush had previously described the wall as "a problem" obstructing the creation of a Palestinian state.

In September, the U.S. employed its veto to kill an Arab-driven resolution condemning Israel for its decision to expel Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Eleven of the 15 Council nations voted in favor of the measure, which was sponsored by Syria, the Council's only Arab member, at the request of the Palestinians, while Britain, Bulgaria and Germany abstained.

On December 20, 2002, Washington vetoed another draft that would have condemned Israel murdering of several U.N. employees in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel, for its part, defended its assassination of Sheikh Yassin, with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon priding in personally supervising it.

Israel claimed that Sheikh Yassin planned several attacks against Israeli targets.

Asked about Sheikh Yassin’s assassination, U.S. President George W. Bush, said Tuesday that "Israel has the right to defend herself from terror," although Washington has insisted that it had no advance warning of the air strike.

The Hamas leader frequently said that Hamas was willing to stop its operations if Israel ended its occupation of Palestinian territories and stopped killing Palestinian women, children and other innocent civilians.

His assassination drew a world outrage for being a serious escalation that would entrench the region in more violence. The European Union said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been made worse by the killing.