US President Barack Obama heads to the UN next week already looking beyond a potential vote on Palestinian statehood and toward laying the groundwork for the resumption of stalled Middle East peace talks.
Obama, facing a potentially destabilizing diplomatic clash, had hoped to focus his efforts at the meetings of the UN General Assembly on boosting the standing of Libya’s former rebel leaders and touting the UN’s role in dismantling former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s regime, but success in Libya seems likely to be overshadowed by a Palestinian push for full UN membership — an effort over which Obama has little influence.
White House officials say it is still unclear what course the Palestinians will take in New York next week.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday that he would ask the UN Security Council to endorse his bid for statehood, though he said he was also open to other unspecified options. The US has pledged to veto the bid and the Obama administration has senior diplomats in the region making a last-ditch effort to persuade the Palestinians to drop the measure.
However, the White House insists its main focus is not on what happens at the UN, but on resuming direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. US officials contend that those negotiations provide the only credible pathway for the Palestinians to achieve statehood.
“Whatever happens at the United Nations, there is going to have to be a process to get these two parties back to the table when we get beyond next week,” White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said on Friday.
As part of the effort to revive the stalled negotiations, Obama will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN meeting next week.
However, whether Obama can make any progress in convincing Netanyahu to return to talks is highly uncertain and it is unclear what bargaining power the US has.
There are no plans for Obama to meet with Abbas in New York and the White House said the two leaders had not spoken recently.
At present, there are also no plans for Netanyahu and Abbas to meet at the UN.
A US official said envoys from the Middle East diplomatic Quartet — the US, UN, EU and Russia — planned to meet in New York today to discuss the pending Palestinian bid.
Obama is due to arrive in New York tomorrow evening, after giving a speech in Washington announcing his deficit cutting recommendations for a joint US Congressional committee.
A Chinese state-run newspaper on Friday warned of a spike in tensions in the Middle East if the US vetoed the Palestinian bid for membership of the UN next week.
“If the US chooses to fly in the face of world opinion and block the Palestine UN bid next week, not only will Israel become more isolated but tensions in the region will be heightened even more,” the China Daily said.
“The majority of the international community deems an independent state as the inalienable right of the Palestinians,” the English-language daily said in an editorial, echoing Beijing’s official position on the issue.
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