MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Abbas anticipates long debate in Security Council on Palestine UN membership

“We are talking about weeks not months” Abbas said (Photo Getty Images)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he expected the Security Council to finish debating his nation's application for full UN membership within weeks, not months.

Speaking to journalists on his plane back from the General Assembly in New York, where he presented the request, Abbas said Security Council members had initially appeared unenthusiastic about the idea of discussing the application.

But he said the mood appeared to change after he delivered a speech to the General Assembly on Friday, during which he pressed the Palestinian case for an independent state alongside Israel.

The United States, Israel's closest ally, has said it will block the move. Both governments say direct peace talks are the correct way for Palestinians to pursue peace. Washington holds veto power in the 15-member Security Council.

“We are talking about weeks not months,” Abbas said.

Abbas's statehood bid reflects his loss of faith after 20 years of failed peace talks sponsored by the United States, and alarm at Israeli settlement expansion in occupied land that Palestinians want for a state.

Apart from the US veto threat, it was also unclear if the required nine of the body's 15 members would support the bid.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki told national radio that officials were still hoping to garner the required votes.

“Consultations continue, especially with Gabon, Nigeria and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which have yet to define their position,” Maliki was quoted as saying.

Alternate to the Security Council, the Palestinians, who currently have observer status at the UN, could ask for the General Assembly to vote to upgrade them to a non-member state which would allow them membership of a number of U.N. agencies.

The General Assembly vote requires only a simple majority of the current 193 member nations, seemingly an easy proposition for the Palestinians.

In his speech to the General Assembly on Friday after presenting the request, Abbas said: “I do not believe that anyone with a shred of conscience can reject our application ... and our admission as an independent state.”

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke shortly after Abbas, said peace could be achieved only through negotiations and dismissed the world body as a “theatre of the absurd.”

Abbas accepts negotiations are still necessary, but argues statehood will put Palestinians on a more equal footing. Israel sees the UN bid as an attempt to erode its own legitimacy.

Palestinians want to establish a state in the Gaza Strip, a coastal enclave controlled by Islamist Hamas who are opposed to peace talks, and in the West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital, land Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East War.