AFP
Arab League 'fed up' with US veto: official
Date: Thu, Oct 07, 2004
CAIRO (AFP) - The Arab League expressed its frustration at the US veto of an Arab-sponsored draft resolution at the United Nations (news - web sites) Security Council against Israel's deadly military operation in Gaza.
"We're fed up," said Said Kamal, the deputy secretary general for Palestinian affairs at the Cairo-based pan-Arab organisation.
"We can't keep count any more of the number of times the Americans have used their veto on behalf of Israel at the Security Council," he said.
The United States on Tuesday vetoed the draft, which called for the "immediate cessation of all military operations in the area of Northern Gaza and the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from that area."
It did not, however, refer to rocket attacks from Gaza by Palestinian militants on Israeli soil that the operation launched on September 28 is intended to quell.
Any attempt by the international community to back the Arab position at the Security Council is always foiled by the Americans, Kamal said.
Britain, Germany and Romania abstained from the vote, and the 11 other council members voted for it.
In Jordan, the pro-government daily Al-Rai said the veto gave Israel a free hand to pursue its deadly operation, which has killed more than 90 Palestinians and which Israeli military sources said would continue until at least Sunday.
"The Bush administration has turned its back on international legislation and public opinion," the newspaper said in a commentary charging that the US veto was "a green light to pursue the massacre" in Gaza.
The only concern of US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) and his administration is "to protect Israel and justify its arrogance and its sickly tendency to use force," the newspaper said.
Al-Dustour, another leading Jordanian daily, said the US veto effectively "supports (Israeli) terrorism" against the Palestinians and criticised Washington's "blind support for Israel".
On Wednesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit regretted the veto and warned Israel not to see this as a "green light to continue its practices against the Palestinians".
Abul Gheit also urged the Palestinians to refrain from targeting Israeli civilians, arguing that this would not serve the peace process or their own cause.
His Jordanian counterpart, Marwan Moasher, said in Spain Tuesday that efforts to secure a two-state solution with Israelis and Palestinians living side by side were "in serious jeopardy" as a result of the Israeli operations in Gaza.
The Arab lawyers' union said Washington's decision to resort to the veto had blocked "condemnation of the Israeli butchery in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites)", in a statement released here.
It made the United States "a full partner of the Zionist entity in its attack on the Palestinian people and the implementation of its extermination plan", the union charged.
SOURCE
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