Palestinians Have Secured Eight Security Council Votes and Are Working on the Ninth Vote Needed for UN Membership Bid

The UN Security Council opened talks on the Palestinian application for full membership on September 30, 2011. Security Council members met for about 75 minutes, making the decision to have a committee of experts meet several times to examine whether the bid fits the criteria for membership. The review process may drag on for weeks or months (before it comes to a final vote in the council) while the Mideast Quartet mediating group -- the U.S., European Union, Russia and the UN -- tries to restart direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Still, a council member may call for a vote within 24 hours at any time. The U.S. has vowed to veto the measure should it receive the necessary nine of 15 council votes in favour of membership for Palestine.

U.S. Economic Clout May Sink Palestinian Quest at UN Council

September 30, 2011

Bloomberg - Economics and political expediency may trump historical connections to determine whether two swing votes on the United Nations Security Council, Nigeria and Gabon, back the Palestinians’ bid for membership.

The two African nations were among the more than 100 countries that responded to Yasser Arafat’s 1988 declaration of independence by recognizing Palestine. This has led Palestinians to look to them for the ninth vote needed for approval by the 15-member council.

While the Palestinians have dispatched diplomats to the capitals of both nations to plead their case, they carry neither the economic heft nor the far-reaching influence of the U.S., which is working to block the Palestinians’ UN initiative.

“This is now realpolitik, pure and simple,” said Calestous Juma, a professor of international development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Security Council members today met for about 75 minutes on the Palestinian application. They decided to have a committee of experts meet several times to examine whether the bid fits the criteria for membership.

The review process may drag on for weeks or even months while Mideast Quartet mediating group -- the U.S., European Union, Russia and the UN -- tries to restart direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Still, a council member may call for a vote within 24 hours at any time.

U.S. Market

Both African nations have reasons to disappoint the Palestinians.

“Their market is the U.S., so why would they want to spoil that relationship?” said Juma.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki told reporters yesterday that they have secured eight votes, and that they are lobbying for more support for their bid for UN membership. Approval requires nine votes, though passage would be blocked by a promised U.S. veto.

The stakes are also high for the U.S., keen to avoid further fallout from having to wield its veto. Such action might enrage an Arab population already disappointed by President Barack Obama’s refusal to endorse the Palestinian quest for statehood.

“The Americans are desperate not to have it go to a vote,” said Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former aide to Mideast Quartet envoy Tony Blair, the former U.K. prime minister. “Having to veto is the nightmare scenario for them.”

Obama, Clinton Lobby

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed their opposition to the Palestinian vote when they met with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan last week in New York. Clinton repeated the message yesterday in talks with Nigerian Foreign Minister Olugbenga Ashiru in Washington.

“We have certainly made it clear to all of our friends that we want to see a return” to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Clinton said, standing alongside Ashiru. “Anything which is done which disrupts that or detours that is a postponement of the outcome we are all seeking.”

Nigeria has multifaceted ties with the U.S. Last year, Jonathan got Obama administration backing when he broke an unwritten rule that leadership of the country had to rotate back to a Muslim. Africa’s most populous country is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.

Domestic Matters

Moreover, the U.S. and Israel have offered him counter- terrorism assistance to quell a surge in attacks by Islamic militants, which has become his foremost domestic priority after the Aug. 26 suicide car-bomb attack on a UN compound in Abuja killed 23 people.

Nigeria received $632 million in U.S. aid this year, making it the second-biggest recipient in sub-Saharan Africa after Kenya.

As Africa’s top oil producer, Nigeria supplies 8 percent of U.S. oil imports. U.S. imports from Nigeria totaled $30.5 billion in 2010, up 60 percent, and exports to Nigeria -- mainly vehicles, wheat and machinery -- totaled $4 billion, up 10 percent, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

During last week’s General Assembly debate, when the Palestinian situation took center stage, Jonathan used his address to world leaders to welcome South Sudan as the UN’s 193rd member and didn’t mention the Palestinian issue.

‘Not Twistable’

Nigeria, which takes over the rotating Security Council presidency from Lebanon in October, has indicated its neutrality.

“Our arms are not twistable,” Nigeria’s Ambassador Joy Ogwu said in New York yesterday. “Every nation has its national position on this issue, on principle.”

Gabon is seated on the Security Council for the first time, giving it rare influence.

For Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose first wife was American, cultivating ties with the U.S. has been a policy cornerstone since taking over power in 2009 following the death of his father, who was Africa’s longest-serving dictator.

Obama met with Ondimba in the White House three months ago, an Oval Office session the Gabonese leader called an “unqualified success.” While his father had only visited the White House twice in 41 years in power, most recently in 2004 under President George W. Bush, the new 52-year-old leader wasted no time traveling to the U.S. Last year, he met with Clinton in Washington.

Oil Exports

Gabon’s exports to the U.S., almost entirely oil, increased 80 percent to $2.2 billion last year, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. U.S. exports to Gabon, mainly machinery, totaled $243 million in 2010, up 42 percent.

In May 2009, the U.S. dispatched a Navy ship to help train Gabonese naval officers in maritime security.

Other Security Council members also will weigh economics and history.

In the case of Colombia, Israel and the U.S. are among the government’s top weapons suppliers in its fight against the drug-fueled FARC, Latin America’s biggest and oldest insurgency. Israeli advisers also assisted in the July 2008 rescue of 15 hostages including politician Ingrid Betancourt.

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, a research group, said the Colombians would be doing the Americans and Israelis a “huge favor” by staying neutral.

Trade Accord

Colombia has a pending free-trade agreement with the U.S. that has been stalled since 2008. Colombian Finance Minister Juan Carlos Echeverry said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday that the U.S. would be making the “worst mistake” by not honoring a free trade agreement with the Latin American nation.

The U.S. has similar agreements already in force with 17 nations, including Mexico and Chile.

Unlike Brazil, the only other Latin American country in the Security Council, Colombia has set itself apart from its neighbors in the region and withheld recognition of Palestine.

Bosnia, another first-timer on the Security Council, recognized Palestine in 1992 when it also declared its own independence before plunging into three-year war. Its position today is complicated by the divisions along ethnic and religious lines. Bosnia’s Muslims and Catholic Croats tend to side with the Palestinians while the Serbs support Israel.

The U.S. also has close ties to Bosnia given its instrumental role in ending the 1992-1995 war there, which culminated in a 20-day negotiating session at the Wright- Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The resulting Dayton peace accords, as the agreement came to be known, divided Bosnia into a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serbian republic.

'We Have Eight Security Council Votes': Palestinians

The UN Security Council on September 28, 2011, pushed back a decision on the Palestinian bid to join the United Nations in a move that will give more time to international efforts to revive direct talks. The 15-member Security Council sent the bid made by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas last Friday to a special membership committee to give its verdict. A full session of the council met for barely two minutes in the first public discussion of the bid that the United States has vowed to veto when it comes to a vote. "Unless I hear a proposal to the contrary I shall send the application of Palestine to the committee on new members," said Lebanon's UN ambassador Nawaf Salam, president of the council for September. No comments were made and Salam hurriedly brought the gavel down to get the meeting over. The membership committee, made up of all 15 council nations, will hold its first meeting on Friday. - UN Council buys time on Palestine membership bid, AFP, September 29, 2011

September 28, 2011

AFP - The Palestinians have secured eight Security Council yes votes for their UN membership bid, just one short of the nine they need, the Palestinian foreign minister said on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Riyad al-Malki said he had received assurances from two additional nations -- Nigeria and Gabon -- that they would vote in favour of the Palestinian bid for full state membership at the UN.

"We have eight states that will vote for Palestine in the Security Council," he said. "We are working hard to have a ninth and a tenth."

Malki said the Palestinians have assurances of "yes" votes from Lebanon, Russia, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, in addition to the new confirmations from Nigeria and Gabon.

"We are working on Bosnia, Colombia and Portugal," he added, saying he was scheduled to visit Bosnia shortly, and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will make stops in Colombia, Portugal, Honduras and the Dominican Republic in October.

Abbas will also deliver an address in Strasbourg on October 6, he said.

The Palestinians need to secure at least nine Security Council votes in favour of their membership bid for it to be approved and advanced to the General Assembly.

Even with the requisite nine votes, the United States has pledged to use its veto to block the request, but the Palestinians hope they can at least claim a diplomatic victory by securing a majority in the Security Council.

Abbas submitted the bid on Friday, shortly before he delivered a historic address to the General Assembly, urging their support for the request.

After closed-door debate on Monday, the Security Council on Wednesday referred the request to a committee set to meet on Friday.

The bid has attracted criticism from Washington and divided the membership of the European Union, raising the prospect that the Security Council might seek to delay a vote altogether to avoid embarrassing its members.

But Malki said the Palestinians would not accept any delay "for political reasons."

US and EU representatives sought to head off the bid before it was submitted to the United Nations, trying to put together a proposal for new peace talks that would convince the Palestinians to drop their request.

Instead, they announced their new proposal shortly after the request was submitted, calling for talks to resume within a month with the goal of achieving a deal before the end of 2012.

Negotiations have been on hold for just over a year, grinding to a halt shortly after they began over the issue of Israeli settlement construction.

The Palestinians say they will not hold talks while Israel builds on land they want for their future state, but Israel says negotiations should restart without preconditions, and declined to renew a 10-month partial settlement freeze that expired shortly after the talks began last year.

Both sides have responded cautiously to the Quartet proposal, with the Israelis saying they are studying the offer and the Palestinians emphasising that they will not hold talks without a settlement freeze.

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