Report: U.S. trying to stall Palestinian statehood bid at UN

Washington introduces plan to renew peace talks with Israel and convince Palestinian Authority to give up UN bid for statehood, according to New York Times report.

By Reuters

Washington has launched an effort to avoid a clash stemming from plans by Palestinians to seek recognition as a state at the United Nations, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing senior U.S. officials and foreign diplomats.

The Obama administration has introduced a plan to restart peace talks with Israel to try to convince Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to give up the bid to seek recognition at the annual meeting of leaders at the UN General Assembly, it said.

The administration has told Abbas it would veto any request made to the UN Security Council to make a Palestinian nation a new member, the Times said.

But it said Washington lacked support to block a vote by the Assembly to raise the status of the Palestinians to a nonvoter observer state from that of a nonvoting "entity," which could allow them to join many UN bodies, and pursue cases against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

Senior U.S. officials and foreign diplomats, whom the Times did not identify, said the administration wanted to avoid having to cast a veto as well as a General Assembly vote that would leave only the United States and a few other nations opposed to Palestinian nationhood.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-u-s-trying-to-stall-palestinian-statehood-bid-at-un-1.382451

has to deal with it under international law, including formal sanctions for international aggression.

Go suck a lemon, Bibi.

The US is just going to have to deal with showing itself for what it is, a permanent member of the Security Council that abuses its veto power in a rather churlish manner...

If you put the alternative out there, then you've suddenly just changed the circumstances and changed the dynamic," the newspaper quoted a senior administration official as saying on Thursday. "And that's what we're trying very much to do.

Unless the "alternative" is not new or different, in which case it has no effect at all.

:hi: