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U.N. Security Council to Meet Monday on Mideast Crisis
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.N. Security Council will hold a public meeting Monday to discuss the crisis in the Middle East, the council president, Alfonso Valdivieso of Colombia, said Thursday.
"It will be a public meeting, starting at 10:00 am [1400 GMT]," he told reporters after holding consultations behind closed doors with ambassadors from the 15 Council member states.
"No decision has been made yet on the outcome, whether there will be a presidential statement or a resolution," he added.
Council resolutions, which are always adopted by a vote, are legally binding on all U.N. member states; presidential statements, adopted by consensus, have less legal weight.
Non-members of the Council may speak in public meetings, but not vote.
Earlier, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations requested an urgent meeting of the Security Council, citing its "obligation to effectively and immediately intervene to put an end to the present tragic situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem," according to a document released Wednesday at U.N. headquarters in New York.
In a letter to the Secretary General and the Council President, Ambassador Nasser Al-Kidwa points to recent Israeli actions in the city of Jenin, calling them "another qualitative escalation in the bloody Israeli military campaign being waged against the Palestinian people since last September."
"We call upon the Council to meet and to take the necessary action in this regard in a speedy and prompt manner," Ambassador Al-Kidwa said.
Muslim nations also called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to help bring an end to the Israeli takeover of key Palestinian institutions, and to deploy international observers to calm the escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence.
"We decided to request an emergency session of the Security Council to consider the grave deterioration of the situation in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine, as soon as possible," said Mali's Charge d'Affaires, Issouf Maiga, who chaired Wednesday's OIC meeting.
The United States said it remained opposed to any Council action on the Middle East.
"Our position is that action in the Security Council isn't going to contribute to the objectives that we've had," U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Wednesday in Washington.
"We feel that action in the United Nations Security Council will not contribute to these objectives, but we'll assist the parties ... on the goal of moving to full implementation of Mitchell and moving to that goal as quickly as possible," Reeker told reporters.
"What we need to do is continue as we have ... focusing on implementation of Mitchell," he added, alluding to the report of an international commission headed by former U.S. senator George Mitchell.
The Mitchell report called for an immediate end to the violence between Israelis and Palestinians, now in its 11th month, and for confidence-building measures.
It also called for international observers to be sent to the Palestinian Occupied Territories, provided both parties to the conflict agreed. Israel has repeatedly voiced its opposition to international observers being deployed to the region.
The U.S. has twice blocked a Palestinian initiative at the U.N. to have monitors stationed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and used its veto power at a March 27th meeting, for the first time in four years, to defeat the proposal.
Israel's ambassador to the U.N., Yehuda Lankry, said Thursday that he expected the U.S. to remain firm in its opposition to an observer force to the region.
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