The United Nations Security Council began wrestling behind closed doors Monday afternoon with a request to admit Palestine as the newest member country of the United Nations.
The 15-member Security Council convened around 3 p.m. to take up the application for membership that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas submitted Friday after addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Continue ReadingAfter a session that lasted roughly an hour, the current president of the council emerged to say the body planned to act Wednesday morning to refer the Palestinian statehood bid to a panel that considers countries? requests to join the U.N.
?It?s a standing committee of the security council,? Lebanon?s ambassador to the U.N., Nawaf Salam, told reporters. ?Our decision today [was] to hold a formal meeting to consider referring the matter to the admissions committee.?
President Barack Obama would likely welcome any delay on a Security Council vote on the Palestinian request. The U.S. has vowed to veto the application if it is poised to pass but would prefer to avoid such a high-profile showdown ? and the likely negative reaction from many Arab and Muslim countries.
Palestinian officials said earlier Monday that they are still hoping for a quick vote on their bid.
?We are hopeful that the process that will start a few minutes from now in the [Security Council] chamber will result in fast action,? Riyad Mansour, the head of the current Palestine ?observer mission? at the U.N., told reporters as the session began. ?We hope the Security Council will shoulder its responsibility and address this application with a positive attitude.?
However, Mansour warned that U.N. Security Council members, including Bosnia, Gabon and Nigeria, are facing intense pressure to shelve or reject the Palestinian application. The Palestinian diplomat referred vaguely to the source of that pressure, but the United States has been a leading voice of opposition to the Palestinian pursuit of statehood through the U.N.
?We all know ? this is an exercise where there will be tremendous pressure by a number of countries on the members of the Security Council,? Mansour said. ?We know we are not the only players in this game. There are others who are applying pressure on members of the Security Council.?
Mansour also called the U.S. threat to veto the statehood bid ?not congruent? with Obama?s public statements supporting the so-called Arab Spring democracy movement.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Monday that he had no details on what specific action the U.S. planned to urge at the Security Council session. However, he said the U.S. focus is on persuading the Palestinians and Israelis to accept the timeline and framework for peace talks laid out on Friday by the Quartet ? the U.S., European Union, Russia and the U.N.
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