UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28: The Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Fawsi Shobokshi, surprised diplomats on Wednesday by accusing Israel of rejecting peace and planning to occupy more Palestinian land.

Shobokshi’s attack, towards the end of a two-day Security Council debate on the Middle East, came in sharp contrast to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz’s proposal to end the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of land for peace.

Most previous council speakers had welcomed the prince’s suggestion that Arab countries normalize ties with Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Arab territories seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

Shobokshi himself noted that the proposal, made in an interview with the New York Times last week, “was welcomed around the world.”

But “Israel has no desire for peace,” he said.

The proposal, made by Prince Abdullah in The New York Times last week, has gradually gathered momentum in Israel as Western mediators ran out of ideas to stop the spiraling Palestinian-Israeli violence.

“Israel’s objective was and remains to expel the Arab people from Palestine and to occupy more and more Palestinian land to set up an exclusive state,” said Shobokshi.

His speech echoed the frustration expressed by other Muslim speakers at the Security Council’s failure to take action recommended by Arab states to protect Palestinian civilians from the Israeli army.

Mohammed al-Douri, the Iraqi ambassador, noted that the Palestinian observer mission to the UN had sent 97 letters to the council since the start of the 17-month-old intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

About 1,290 people have been killed in the uprising, the vast majority of them Palestinians.

On Thursday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told the council it had an “essential role” to play in helping to bring the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

“The lack of mutual confidence between the two sides makes a third-party role essential,” he said.

But the US ambassador, John Negroponte, said after the debate began Tuesday evening that “as a practical matter, Security Council action at this time will not resolve the problems between Palestinians and Israelis.”

The council has met less than half a dozen times since the start of the intifada, and on the two occasions that a resolution was discussed, the United States vetoed it.—AFP