French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the Palestinians on Tuesday to drop their bid for UN membership and opt instead for upgraded status in the world body, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas remained determined to pursue international recognition of an independent state.
Diplomats close to the talks said Sarkozy would outline on Wednesday his proposal for the Palestinians to seek approval in the General Assembly, where no member holds a veto, for a resolution that would make Palestine a non-member observer state, raising their status from that of permanent observer.
Such a move would avoid a certain U.S. veto if the Palestinian membership bid were put to a vote in the Security Council. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.
With Abbas determined to seek membership rather than upgraded status, the Palestinian delegation relentlessly knocked on diplomatic doors at the U.N. trying to sell their case for international recognition. Israel's prime minister, meanwhile, issued dire warnings against hasty action as he boarded his jet for New York.
The issue of the unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood, born of decades of frustration and failed negotiations with Israel, has consumed diplomats who are gathering for Wednesday's opening of the annual U.N. General Assembly ministerial meeting.
Abbas has rejected all attempts to steer him away from formally submitting an application for full U.N. membership. He plans to submit the application on Friday when he speaks to assembled world leaders.
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a meeting with members of his hardline Likud Party before leaving Jerusalem late Tuesday, vowed to speak "the truth" in New York -- "the truth of a people that wants peace, a nation that was attacked time after time and that is being attacked time after time by those that don't oppose our policies but rather our very existence."
He said he would warn world leaders against prematurely establishing a Palestinian state when many issues in the conflict must still be resolved. He did not elaborate, saying this would be the focus of his speech to the U.N. on Friday, scheduled shortly after Abbas'.
The White House said late Tuesday that President Barack Obama would meet with Abbas on the sidelines of the U.N. gathering on Wednesday. Obama's diplomatic team has repeatedly said the United States, Israel's closest ally, would exercise its Security Council veto should the Palestinians win the necessary nine of 15 votes in the powerful body to adopt a resolution recommending U.N. membership for Palestine.
Officials close to the U.S. and European delegations indicated Obama would be making a last effort to steer Abbas away from a move in the Security Council that would force Washington to act on its promise to block the move. American diplomats have worked at a furious pace to lure the Palestinians back to negotiations, knowing a U.S. veto was certain to inflame anti-American sentiment in the Arab world.
While the U.S has said it will vote no, the other 14 members of the U.N. Security Council have not publicly declared their positions. China, Russia, India, Lebanon, South Africa and Brazil were all expected to vote yes. Germany was expected to vote no with the United States or abstain. Still unknown were the positions of France, Britain, Bosnia, Colombia, Gabon, Nigeria, Portugal with many saying they needed to see the text of a draft resolution before making a decision.
U.S. and other diplomats say the European Union, supported by the U.S., now was trying to work out wording of an agreement that could avert the U.N. showdown over Palestine. There was no sign, however, that either Israel or the Palestinians will agree.
Officials say Israel is being asked to accept its pre-1967 War borders with land swaps as the basis for a two-state solution. The Palestinians would essentially have to recognize Israel's Jewish character.
Those issues remain sticking points. Officials say there is also disagreement among the mediators as Russia is finds some elements unacceptable.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the diplomatic negotiations.
The seemingly endless road toward peace in the Middle East, a caustic and seemingly insoluble problem, has found its way into the fiery partisanship of American politics as the races heats up for next year's presidential vote. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to challenge Obama, lambasted the president in a speech Friday during a campaign stop in New York.
"We would not be here today at this very precipice of such a dangerous move if the Obama policy in the Middle East wasn't naive and arrogant, misguided and dangerous," Perry said, referring to Obama's insistence early in his presidency that Israel stop constructing Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territory that would form the core of an independent Palestine.
The political give-and-take was equally fierce among diplomats clustering at the U.N.
Among his many stops on Tuesday, Abbas met with Sarkozy and British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Were the Palestinians to take Sarkozy's advice, they would become a non-member observer state, status like that of the Holy See. That would give them an opportunity to seek membership in U.N. agencies and join treaties, including the Rome statute that established the International Criminal Court.
But Mohammed Ishtayeh, an Abbas aide, said Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman, whose country holds the Security Council presidency this month, urged the Palestinian leader to proceed with the application for U.N. membership.
Ishtayeh said discussions with Sarkozy and Hague "focused on what can be done to avoid going to the Security Council," adding that "some still believe that a way out can be found." But he said Abbas made it clear that the discussions should be focused on the aftermath of the Palestinian application to the Security Council.
France is home to an estimated 5 to 6 million Muslims, the largest such population in Western Europe. Their family backgrounds mostly are traced to former French colonies in North Africa.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who also was in New York, told Europe-1 radio in Paris that his country still was working to get Mideast peace talks restarted before the United Nations faces a vote. "The status quo is untenable," Juppe said. "The only way to settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem is direct negotiations."
Abbas also met with Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby and Suleiman.
"I believe that first of all the Palestinians are entitled to be considered as a state," Elaraby said. "They enjoy the same basis as Israel . . . and they're entitled to declare the state and they have declared it and the international community has to react to that positively."
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, sat down with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Mideast envoy David Hale. Blair serves as the point man for the so called Quartet -- the U.S., the U.N., the European Union and Russia -- that has tried to shepherd the Israelis and Palestinian back to peace talks.
"We know that they (the U.S.) will use the veto against our demand in the Security Council. They've told us that many times," Erekat said.
