US, UK accused of derailing UN text: Palestinian envoy on Israeli raid
UNITED NATIONS, March 17: The Palestinian UN representative on Thursday accused the United States and Britain of derailing adoption of a Security Council statement on an Israeli raid of a Palestinian prison earlier this week.
Riyad Mansour stormed out of a meeting of the 15-member Security Council to claim that the US and Britain essentially blocked agreement on ‘a very mild text’ that would have demanded ‘the immediate release of the Palestinian prisoners kidnapped by the Israeli occupying forces from Jericho prison’.
The Jericho raid by Israeli forces on Tuesday sparked an unprecedented wave of abductions and anti-Western violence, including the torching of two British cultural centres in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Mr Mansour said his delegation had shown flexibility in the negotiations on the non-binding text but insisted on including a reference to the six Palestinian militants seized from the jail in the West Bank town of Jericho.
The Palestinian envoy said the stand taken by Washington and London ‘increases the suspicion of many of us that they collaborate in this exercise’.
“They had a golden opportunity to distance themselves from such accusation by supporting the position to pressure Israel to free the Palestinian prisoners kidnapped from Jericho,” he added.
But British UN delegate Adam Thomson swiftly rejected Mr Mansour’s allegations.
“The British government categorically rejects his assertion that there was any collaboration between the United Kingdom and Israel” over the Jericho events.
Britain has said it was forced to pull out three monitors from the prison in Jericho because the Palestinians had failed to ensure their safety.
Israel launched its raid just after their withdrawal, engaging in gunfights and eventually seizing militants it said it feared would be released by the Palestinians.
Mr Thomson said the proposed council statement ‘deplores the violence in which several people, including Palestinian officers, have been killed and a number of international personnel have been kidnapped’.
It calls on both parties to ‘exercise maximum restraint and ... upon Israel to withdraw all its forces from Jericho and to return to the situation that existed prior to March 14’.
Mr Thomson said it was ‘not possible to reach agreement’ on the text because Qatar, at the request of the Palestinians, introduced a last-minute amendment insisting on including the reference to ‘Palestinian prisoners’ and to the ‘Jericho jail’.
The British UN delegate said the fate of the statement, which requires unanimity, was now unclear. —AFP
