Palestinians to Push UN Bid Despite Obama's Threats and Sarkozy's Tricks

Video of press conference of Obama and Netanyahu, followed by excerpts of Obama's UN pro-Israel speech:

http://www.reuters.com/video/2011/09/21/obama-us-commitment-to-israel-unbreakabl?videoId=221751166&videoChannel=117764

Sarkozy proposes one-year deadline for peace deal

France 24, September 21, 2011

AP -

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for an end to "endless debates" and proposed a one-year timetable for a Mideast peace accord on Wednesday, while warning that a veto of the Palestinian bid for UN membership could spark "a cycle of violence".

French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a one-year timetable Wednesday for Israel and the Palestinians to reach a peace accord, part of a concerted push with the United States for the Palestinian leaders to abandon an application for U.N. membership.

Sarkozy spoke at the General Assembly shortly after President Barack Obama warned their could be no “shortcut” to peace and that negotiations, not U.N. declarations, were essential to a lasting peace.

While Obama stopped short of calling directly calling on the Palestinians to drop their bid for full membership -- an effort the U.S. has vowed to veto in the Security Council -- Sarkozy sounded a more compromising tone and urged each side, and the international community, to approach the deadlocked process with new ideas and tactics.

DIPLOMACY France walks tightrope in Palestinian statehood bid

“Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters and let us being negotiations and adopt a precise and ambitious timetable,” Sarkozy told the leaders and officials gathered at the U.N. “Sixty years without moving one centimeter forward, doesn’t that suggest that we should change the method and the scheduling here?”

“Let’s have one month to resume discussions, six months to find agreement on borders and security, one year to reach a definitive agreement,” he said.

A senior European Union official said the proposal laid out by Sarkozy matched one by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton during a meeting with EU foreign ministers on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions.

Abbas’ push for full membership, which he has said would be submitted on Friday, has dominated this year’s U.N. meeting, pushing the U.S. and Israel against a wall of international sympathy for Palestinians. While the full membership bid would meet with a certain U.S. veto in the Security Council, assuming the Palestinians muster enough votes to have it approved, they have succeeded in bringing the issue again to the forefront of the world’s political discussions after years of failed negotiations, bickering and sporadic outbreaks of violence.

Sarkozy said that by setting preconditions, “we doom ourselves to failure. ... There must be no preconditions.”

Palestinians to push U.N. bid despite Obama

By Alistair Lyon

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 9:47pm EDT

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -

U.S. President Barack Obama told the United Nations on Wednesday there was no short cut to Middle East peace but Palestinians said they would press on with a request for U.N. recognition of their nascent state.

Amid frantic efforts to avert a diplomatic disaster, French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the United Nations to grant the Palestinians the status of observer state, like the Vatican, while outlining a one-year roadmap to peace.

A year after telling the General Assembly he hoped to see a Palestinian state born by now, the U.S. president said creating such a state alongside Israel remained his goal.

"But the question isn't the goal we seek -- the question is how to reach it. And I am convinced that there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades," he told the assembly.

With U.S. sway in the Middle East at stake, Obama had hoped to dissuade the Palestinians from asking the Security Council for statehood despite Israeli wrath and a U.S. veto threat.

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seems determined to pursue his plan to hand an application for statehood to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday.

Obama told Abbas in a meeting that U.N. action would not lead to a Palestinian state and that the United States would veto such a move in the Security Council, the White House said.

Asked if Abbas had given any sign he might change course, Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said: "He has been very clear what his intent is ... which is to go to the Council and to begin the process of securing membership there."

Abbas' spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said the two leaders had reiterated their positions, without any apparent result.

Obama, echoing Israel's position, told the United Nations that only negotiations can lead to a Palestinian state.

"Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N.," he said. "Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians -- not us -- who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem."

However, it is the failure of 20 years of U.S.-brokered negotiations that has driven Abbas to take his quest for a state to the United Nations -- a ploy that could embarrass the United States by forcing it to protect its Israeli ally against the tide of world opinion.

Obama earlier met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and assured him of unwavering U.S. support.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to hold separate talks with Abbas and Netanyahu in the evening.

BLEAK PROSPECTS

Although Obama said he had set out a new basis for negotiations in May, chances of reviving peace talks look bleak.

The two sides are far apart. The Palestinians are divided internally and Obama will not want to risk alienating Israel's powerful U.S. support base by pressing for Israeli concessions as he enters a tough battle for re-election next year.

In more evidence of Obama's domestic constraints, a U.S. Senate committee voted to prohibit aid to the Palestinians if they joined the United Nations.

France has grown frustrated at the lack of progress, saying negotiations should be widened to include a more hands-on role for Europe given the impasse in U.S.-led efforts.

"Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters and begin negotiations," Sarkozy said. "The moment has come to build peace for Palestinian and Israeli children."

Sarkozy said negotiations should begin within one month, an agreement on borders and security should be clinched within six months and a definitive agreement be reached within a year.

Rhodes said there was some "overlap" between Obama and Sarkozy on their Middle East peace ideas, but they differed on Palestinian membership of the United Nations.

The Palestinians see statehood as opening the way for negotiations between equals. Israel says the Palestinian move aims at delegitimizing the Jewish state.

Flag-waving Palestinians rallied in West Bank city squares to back the recourse to the United Nations.

The drama at the United Nations is playing out as Arab uprisings are transforming the Middle Eastern landscape.

Obama pledged support for Arab democratic change, called for more U.N. sanctions against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and urged Iran and North Korea to meet their nuclear obligations -- twin standoffs that have eluded his efforts at resolution.

Iran freed two Americans held for spying, in what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called a compassionate gesture before he addresses the United Nations on Thursday.

DELAYING ACTION

The Security Council could delay action on Abbas' request, giving the mediating "Quartet" -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- more time to craft a declaration that could coax both sides back to the table.

A French presidential source said the Quartet was unlikely to issue such a declaration within the next three days.

A senior Palestinian official, Nabil Shaath, said the Palestinians would give the Security Council "some time" to consider the statehood claim before they took it to the General Assembly, where Washington has no veto.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, said Obama's speech was a disappointment, accusing him of being selective when upholding principles of freedom and self-determination.

"When it comes to Palestinians suffering from an oppressive foreign military occupation, somehow ... these principles do not apply. They only apply when Arabs rebel against their own oppressive regime."

Whatever happens at the United Nations, Palestinians will remain under Israeli occupation and any nominal state would lack recognized borders or real independence and sovereignty.

It is a measure of their desperation that they are persisting with an initiative that could incur financial retribution from Israel and the United States.

In his speech to the General Assembly, Ban asked governments to show solidarity in meeting "extraordinary challenges" for the world body, ranging from climate change to peacekeeping.

"Without resources, we cannot deliver," he declared, pledging to streamline U.N. budgets to "do more with less."

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta, Andrew Quinn, Lou Charbonneau, Matt Spetalnick, Laura MacInnis, John Irish, Emmanuel Jarry, Daniel Bases and Patrick Worsnip. Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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