UN appeal no substitute for negotiations: Abbas

Speaking at the opening session of a two-day meeting of the Palestinian Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Ramallah, Abbas said that the Palestinian Authority has sought support from countries on five continents for its request.
He added that 122 countries so far have recognized the Palestinian state with borders that existed in June 1967.
Abbas said that the decision to approach the United Nations to gain an international recognition of independence is not a unilateral action or an alternative to peace talks. “We prefer to negotiate with Israel, and the UN appeal is not a substitute for talks,” he explained. “It is not a unilateral action and it doesn't mean to isolate Israel. The move aims at coexisting with Israel and backing the vision of the two-state solution,” said Abbas.
The Palestinian president strongly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for canceling all peace understandings he reached with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
“Netanyahu wants to go back to point zero in the negotiations for a peace agreement,” Abbas said.
With regard to US rejection of the recognition bid, Abbas said that Palestinian leadership “did not hear a clear US rejection against approaching the UN. We hear of the US rejection from its mediators.”
The dispute over continued construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is the major reason for the suspension of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians since September 2010.
The Palestinians leadership decided to seek an international recognition of a full membership of their future state, established on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The meeting of the Central Council comes five days after Abbas convened a gathering of Palestinian diplomats in Istanbul to finalize the strategy for the membership bid.
The Central Council is the PLO's most important decision-making body in the absence of the Palestinian National Council, the parliament-in-exile, which rarely meets.