19 September 2004	Sunday	03 Shaban 1425

WASHINGTON, Sept 18: The United States will launch a drive to reduce the number of UN resolutions it deems to be anti-Israel during the next session of the UN General Assembly which gets underway next week in New York, senior State Department officials said on Friday.

The two officials said Washington had already made slight progress in stemming the number of such resolutions - usually proposed by Arab nations and approved with the support of many non-aligned countries - by appealing for the documents to be balanced between Israel and the Palestinians or not be adopted.

Last year, the United States succeeded in reducing the number of anti-Israel resolutions, which it believes to be inflammatory and counter-productive to Middle East peace efforts - from 21 to 20, the officials told reporters on condition of anonymity.

"It's very labour intensive but we can make some progress and we can build some alliances about trying to reduce what, is in our view, the clear skewed treatment of Israel in these resolutions," one official said.

The new US campaign will be centred on trying to win full support from UN members for the so-called "roadmap" for peace which has stalled since its creation last year amid new violence and recrimination between Israel and the Palestinians, the officials said.

"We have couched this objective not in terms of (the number of) resolutions, though, but in terms of furthering the roadmap," the official said.

"Where we think the focus in the United Nations system needs to be on is a furthering of the roadmap not passing 21 resolutions that have zero impact or the impact, in our view, is negative impact in terms of advancing the cause of (peace)," the official said.

The officials allowed that real success in the project would not come easily, noting similar failed US efforts in the past and the fact that Washington has been forced to veto several recent UN Security Council resolutions that it believed were biased against Israel, its chief Middle East ally.

"This is a tough one, this is not going to be one where you will see those lopsided vote counts turned around overnight," the official said. "This is the UN General Assembly, we're looking for incremental progress here but we think its important to keep the focus on this."

Unlike resolutions adopted by the Security Council, resolutions adopted by the General Assembly are not legally binding but do reflect world opinion.

Israel and United States have repeatedly complained about the large number of General Assembly resolutions critical of the Zionist state, many of which are routinely adopted and annually renewed by the world body.

In addition to reducing the number of anti-Israel resolutions, the officials said the United States will be looking to increase condemnatory references to anti-Semitism in UN documents and boost awareness of the issue.-AFP