Security Council flays US failure to rein in Israel

United Nations:  Fourteen frustrated members of the UN Security Council pointed a finger at the United States on Tuesday for blocking any condemnation of Israel's accelerated colony construction in Palestinian territory.

In a move which Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin called "historic", diplomats from almost all regional blocs represented on the Council stepped to the microphone on Tuesday to condemn the lack of progress toward a solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Churkin, the current Council president, said the frustration over the impasse in Israel-Palestinian talks spilled out in statements from the four European Union council members, the Nonaligned Movement, the Arab group, and the group of emerging powers that includes India, Brazil and South Africa.

Referring to the United States, Churkin said dismissively that one delegation believes things will "miraculously" sort themselves out on their own.

Britain's UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, also speaking for EU members France, Germany and Portugal, said, "Israel's security and the realisation of the Palestinians' right to statehood are not opposing goals." "On the contrary, they are mutually reinforcing objectives," he said. "But, they will not be achieved while colony building and colonist violence continues."

South Africa's UN Ambassador Baso Sangqu, speaking on behalf of the Nonaligned Movement of mainly developing countries, said colonist attacks against Palestinian civilians had increased 50 per cent this year and called Israeli colony construction "the main impediment for the two-state solution of the conflict".

The diplomats' anger was clearly directed at Washington which vetoed a resolution in February backed by the 14 other Council members that would have demanded an immediate halt to all colony building. The Obama administration has also promised to veto any Security Council resolution supporting Palestine's bid to become the 194th member of the UN.

Payton Knopf, the US Mission's deputy spokesman, told AP, "The only way to resolve the outstanding issues is through serious and substantive direct negotiations."