Photo Courtesy of UN Photo/Marco Castro
The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday referred the Palestinian application for full UN membership and effective statehood recognition to the Committee on the Admission of New Members, set to meet this Friday. According to a webcast of the Security Council proceeding on the UN website, Nawaf Salam, the UN ambassador from Lebanon which is the current president of the Council, said the application has been sent to the committee for “examination and report on its outcomes.”
A UN official told The Mideast Update by phone that the membership committee process is used for all UN member applications. The committee is comprised of representatives from all 15 nations on the Security Council. They will study and negotiate regarding the application before giving a recommendation to the Council.
The UN official told The Mideast Update that as far as he knows there is no time limit on how long the membership committee can take to review the application.
Once the committee has finished their review, the Security Council will take a vote on the application. At least nine yes votes and no vetoes are needed for the application to be approved and go to the UN General Assembly for a final vote on admission of the applicant as a full UN member. The United States is one of five nations with veto power on the Security Council.
The US has pledged to veto can u order phentermine online such a move should that be necessary in a final vote—the date of which is uncertain at this time. The US considers the Palestinian move to be unhelpful to the peace process, arguing that only peace talks—not UN resolutions—can solve the conflict.
The Palestinian representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour, told reporters following the meeting that they hope the application is approved sooner rather than later. In comments also broadcast via webcast on the UN website, Mansour said, “We hope that this exercise will not take too long before we see positive action by the Security Council in accepting our application.”
Following the Palestinian comments, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor told reporters that they are ready “today” to negotiate, and “everything is on the table.” According to the webcast of his comments, Prosor again expressed Israel’s position that peace cannot be imposed from the outside, but only through direct negotiations.
“We had peace with Egypt, it wasn’t imposed, we negotiated. With Jordan, the same thing… Peace by definition is an agreement of both sides that will be achieved through negotiations,” said Prosor. “There are no shortcuts to that.
Prosor later said that Israel feels that with regard to the Palestinians “we should really be talking to each other and not over each other, and it’s time at this stage to move from speechmaking to peacemaking.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, September 28, 2011)