UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21: The UN General Assembly on Thursday reposed full confidence in the leadership of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in ending the 15-month violence in the Middle East.

In a response to heavy Israeli attacks on the Palestinian Authority and a US veto in the Security Council on a resolution seeking international monitors for the region, the General Assembly backed a central role for Yasser Arafat.

In an emergency special session the 189-member Assembly voted 124 to 6 with 25 abstentions in essence reversing the Security Council veto by the United States.

Although the UNGA resolution has no legal or binding authority on member states as against the Security Council decisions, the vote is seen as a moral victory for the nation states who back the Palestinian leader who has been called “irrelevant” to the Middle East peace process by Israelis.

One General Assembly resolution said that following the recent Israeli military strikes on Palestinian Authority targets, Arafat’s administration remained the indispensable and legitimate party for peace and needed to be preserved fully.

Identical to the resolution vetoed last week by Washington, it also branded Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas as illegal and an obstacle to peace in the region.

The Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Tuvalu joined Israel and the United States in voting ‘no’, while most European nations voted for the resolution. Among those abstaining were Britain, Japan, Australia, Norway, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia.

A second assembly resolution, approved by a 133-4 vote with 16 abstentions, endorsed a declaration adopted by an international conference in Geneva on Dec 5 calling on the occupying power —Israel— to refrain from wilful killing, torture (and) unjustified restrictions of free movement.

Only the Marshall Islands and Micronesia joined the United States and Israel in opposing the second resolution. Major Western industrial countries generally voted but Australia and Canada abstained.

“Unfortunately, these resolutions, like the resolution before the Security Council last week, fail to address the terrible dynamic at work in the region,” said US Ambassador John Negroponte.

“Instead its purpose is to isolate politically one of the parties to the conflict through an attempt to throw the weight of the General Assembly behind the other party,” he said.

Palestine’s UN observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, argued the resolutions underlined “in a glaring way the obscene situation of one state that considers itself above the law and publicly expresses its contempt for UN resolutions with the cover and automatic protection of the world’s superpower.”

The special session was called by Egypt, on behalf of the Arab League, and by South Africa, which leads the Non-Aligned Movement of largely developing countries.

Negroponte said on Saturday Washington vetoed the measure in the 15-nation Security Council because it was aimed at isolating Israel politically and did not mention recent suicide bombings against Israelis or those responsible for them.

But the United States does not have veto power in the General Assembly. The emergency special session was the fourth in recent years to be called to consider illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Earlier sessions, which took place in 1997, 1998 and 2000, date back to the establishment of new Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory in 1997.