During a Friday UN Security Council meeting called at the request of Arab states to deal with the sole issue of Israeli settlement-building in Palestinian territory, Saudi Arabia, the Arab League and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asked the Security Council to save the faltering Middle East peace process by demanding an end to Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shows maps during a United Nations Security Council meeting about the situation in the Middle East as Israel's UN ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, right, looks on at UN headquarters in New York, Friday.
Photo: AP
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reminded the Council that "just one year ago, there was no peace process," and noted that Israel and the Palestinians continue their negotiations, along with many other partners. She said US President George W. Bush had met with Abbas on Thursday, and that she would be meeting him later Friday.
Rice also noted that the recognized format for discussion of the Middle East peace process is the Quartet, the working partnership of the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union.
"The Quartet is the proper forum for those negotiations," she pointedly told the council.
Abbas said that "A definite end must be put to settlement diplomacy."
Saudi Prince Saud Al-Faisal said the settlement problem is the "one issue that threatens to bring down the whole peace process."
He said that addressing it was the only way to save the peace deal brokered in Annapolis, Maryland, early this year by Bush Administration, with the goal of achieving a substantive peace accord by the end of 2008.
For months, the United States had successfully kept Palestinian issues out of the Security Council, giving room for private discussions between Israel and the Palestinians to work.
Friday's debate seemed to signal that time had run out for the quiet back-door talks favored by the Annapolis process.
Before the meeting, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters that the United States and some other nations had objected to Friday's open debate, but that Washington had bowed to the inevitable and let the meeting take place.
Saud called on Israel to "cease all settlement activity including the issuance of permits."
Now the Bush administration is winding down into its final months before a new president is inaugurated in January, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has resigned in a corruption scandal. Olmert remains caretaker prime minister until his successor as head of the ruling Kadima party, Tzipi Livni, forms a coalition.
Amr Moussa, speaking for the Arab League, noted that "there are only three months left in the year 2008 and there is no sign" of a Palestinian state emerging.
New Israeli UN ambassador Gabriela Shalev replied that a stranger visiting the UN might suppose from the debate that Hamas violence, missile attacks fired over Israel's border, the buildup of Hizbullah forces in Lebanon and Iran's nuclear ambitions posed no problem to the Mideast peace process.
"While settlements remain a delicate issue, they are not the principal one," she said.
"We in Israel are committed to a two-state solution," Shalev said. "We continue to negotiate with the Palestinian president."
"Israel is prepared, if the conditions arrive, to make painful concessions" on the settlement issue. she said.
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