NEW YORK, 25 September — Saudi Arabia said it was time for the UN Security Council to act against Israel’s “oppressive and terrorist campaigns” against the Palestinian people.
In an address on Monday night to the Security Council’s special session on the Middle East situation, Saudi Ambassador to UN Fawzi Shubokshi said that the international community cannot stand with hands tied in the face of the military escalation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He wanted the UN to pressure Israel to stop its aggression and make it abide by international humanitarian law as well as provide Palestinian civilians with protection urgently. Shubokshi also called for lifting the Israeli siege on the headquarters of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli troops’ withdrawal to positions they held before September 2000.
The ambassador said UN’s immediate intervention was necessary to avoid the killing of an entire population and to save them from expulsion from their own homeland. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal to discuss the latest Israeli military escalations in the Palestinian territories and the siege imposed on Arafat.
In a press statement, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the conversation dealt with the latest Israeli measures in Ramallah. He renewed US call for Israel to rethink carefully on the consequences of its measures. In Jeddah, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called yesterday for the “immediate intervention” of the international community to lift the Israeli siege of Arafat’s offices.
“We call for an immediate and strong intervention by the “international community to stop this aggression and lift the siege imposed on the Palestinian leadership and people,” said OIC Secretary-General Abdul Wahed Belqeziz.
He denounced the siege as in "flagrant defiance of international conventions, agreements and laws," according to an OIC statement. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad ibn Jassem, whose country currently chairs the OIC , said he had contacts on Saturday with Israeli officials who gave assurances that Arafat would not be harmed.
