President Clinton has called on the U.N. General Assembly to repeal its past resolutions condemning Israel.
Speaking before the world body Monday, Clinton said that “the repeal of outdated U.N. resolutions” would buttress peace in the Middle East.
The United States, along with Russia and Egypt, has said it would work with Israel to ensure that dozens of resolutions critical of Israel are not automatically renewed this year.
The drive to overturn one of those resolutions, which annually link Israel to South African apartheid, was expected to get a boost Monday evening, when Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was scheduled to meet with Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress.
Mandela addressed the General Assembly last week, calling for an end to sanctions against South Africa in the wake of the scheduling of the country’s first non-racial elections, and praising the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Clinton, in his U.N. address, cited both the recent Israeli-Palestinian accord, and the agreements between Mandela and South African President F.W. de Klerk, as evidence that now “is a moment of miracles.”
Clinton also condemned terrorism, which “assumes a horrifying immediacy for us here, when militant fanatics bombed the World Trade Center and planned to attack even this very hall of peace.
“Let me assure you, whether (they are) the plotters of those crimes or the mass murderers who bombed Pan Am Flight 103, my government is determined to see that such terrorists are brought to justice.”
Because of the holiday of Sukkot, the JTA Daily News Bulletin will not be published Friday, Oct. 1.
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