NEW YORK: Arab countries will ask for an urgent UN Security Council session to discuss Israeli settlement activity on land the Palestinians want for a future state, Arab foreign ministers said on Wednesday.
“There will be an Arab request for a Security Council meeting to discuss the issue of settlements ... as soon as possible, hopefully this week,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters.
Aboul Gheit was speaking after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. Palestinian negotiators have said Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank is undermining US-sponsored efforts to achieve a peace accord.
Israel has said it plans to keep building in large settlement blocs it intends to keep under any future peace deal. Israeli officials say, meanwhile, the Palestinians have failed to meet their obligation to rein in militants.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said that he and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal were scheduled to relay the request for the meeting to the head of the Security Council yesterday.
“We will stress on the necessity to convene the (Security) Council even though there is an objection from one country,” Moussa told reporters after the meeting. He did not name that country. The United States has often used its veto power to block anti-Israel resolutions.
Meanwhile, a panel of Israeli ministers yesterday agreed to raise the number of Palestinian prisoners who could be released in a swap deal with Hamas, but the Islamist group said the list fell short of its demands.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tasked the committee with approving a list of prisoners that could be freed in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by militants from the Gaza Strip in a 2006 cross-border raid. The Israeli committee, headed by Vice Premier Haim Ramon, backed the release of 450 Palestinian prisoners, about half of whom were on a list submitted by Hamas.
