U.N. Weighs Mideast Cease-fire
Mon Apr 1, 7:37 PM ET
By DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - As pressure mounted on Israel to swiftly withdraw from reoccupied Palestinian lands, the United States and the U.N. chief were at odds Monday over whether a Security Council resolution calling for an Israeli pullout depends first on a cease-fire.
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Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) also raised the difficult issue of involving a third party as mediator or monitor. Israel and the Palestinians are deeply divided on such a proposal.
"Now that the parties are locked in the logic of war, we need to do all that we can to move them back to the logic of peace," Annan said.
He spoke after the Security Council on Saturday passed a resolution calling for Israel to pull all its forces out of Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, where Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) is under virtual house arrest with Israeli tanks and troops besieging his headquarters.
Noting that the resolution opens with a call for a cease-fire, U.S. officials said a cessation of violence should be a first step before Israel pulls back.
The resolution calls on "both parties to move immediately to a meaningful cease-fire — that's the very first sentence," White House spokesman Ari Fleisher said. A senior White House official later confirmed that Washington expected a cease-fire to come ahead of a troop withdrawal.
At the United Nations (news - web sites), U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said "the call is for an immediate cease-fire. In addition to that, there are other ingredients ... which need to be implemented."
But Annan said "there was no sequencing," in the resolution. "Before the vote, the president of the council indicated to the members that this was the understanding on which members were going to vote," Annan told reporters after briefing the council earlier Monday.
Turning up the pressure, a group of Arab countries, pushed by the Palestinians, sought a second resolution on Monday demanding the implementation of Saturday's vote.
"There was a resolution which was not implemented and we want the council to stress the need for immediate implementation," said Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative to the United Nations.
Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov said the council would discuss the matter Tuesday with Annan, but he did not say when the Arab request would be taken up formally. Western diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested immediate action was unrealistic.
The Arab Group needs a council member to sponsor the resolution request, but Syria, which has been on the council since January, seemed unwilling to help. Syria boycotted Saturday's vote. It was a rare move by a council member but rarer still for an Arab country to walk away from the Palestinian issue.
Arab and Western diplomats suggested that Syria was not prepared to participate in any matter that did not deal with Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights, captured in the 1967 Mideast War.
But Syrian Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe said Syria was taking a principled stand against a resolution which it believed did not go far enough in condemning Israel.
In the region Monday, Israeli troops only intensified an offensive across the West Bank, briefly pushing into Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns. Israeli leaders said the military drive was meant to smash a Palestinian terrorist infrastructure that claimed more than 40 Israeli lives in five days. Palestinians, for their part, said Israel's tactics amounted to a campaign of state terror against the civilian population.
"I think what is clear is that the parties left to themselves cannot resolve this issue," Annan said in New York. "They need a third party to help with the mediation and perhaps in other forms too."
The Palestinians have pushed several times for U.N. intervention, possibly peacekeepers or observers, to end 18 months of bloodshed in the Middle East. Israel, suspicious of a perceived U.N. bias, has said it would only agree to a limited American mission.
Annan did not say whether he supported a U.S., U.N. or other presence but said the issue had been raised by many of the world leaders he spoke to this weekend.
"It would take a real optimist to think that we've hit rock bottom (because) it's likely to get worse," Annan said.
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