Posted on 12/04/2001 7:13:20 AM PST by blam
UN snubs Israel plea with strong criticism
The United Nations General Assembly has ignored Israel's plea to reject Palestinian terrorism.
Instead the body has strongly criticised Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.
Israel's UN Ambassador had appealed to the other 188 nations to detach themselves from resolutions which he said would endow Palestine with international legitimacy.
But the General Assembly voted in favour of the four Palestinian-related resolutions, which each received over 100 "Yes" votes from about 160 nations that voted.
The key resolution backed Palestinian rights to an independent state on the basis of "land for peace" and called for an Israeli withdrawal and a return to negotiations on a final peace settlement.
"We are very satisfied," the Palestinian UN observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, said afterwards, accusing Israel of doing everything it could "to sabotage all efforts to resume this peace process."
Jordan's UN ambassador, Prince Zeid Al-Hussein, one of the last speakers in the debate, denounced Israel's latest "military acts of aggression ... and their use of unjustified power".
Last year, the United States was the only country to join Israel in voting against all four Palestinian-related resolutions. This year, two small Pacific island nations, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, also voted against the four resolutions.
The key resolution, entitled "Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine," was approved by a vote of 131 to six, with 20 abstentions.
A number of countries - including Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Australia, Denmark, Paraguay and Germany - said they abstained because it was not evenhanded in condemning attacks against civilians on both sides.
Story filed: 08:14 Tuesday 4th December 2001
And yet, without US support, the UN would simply cease to exist. Like they're saying in Afghanistan, its getting hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore.
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