The United States last night vetoed in the Security Council a resolution calling on the Council “to affirm the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right of return and the right to national independence and sovereignty in Palestine, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.”
The U.S. veto ended the debate on the report of the 20-member Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People which started here June 9. Israel boycotted the debate on the grounds that the committee’s recommendation was in fact an adoption of the PLO plan for the destruction of Israel “in stages.”
The U.S. cast the lone negative vote last night. Britain, France, Italy and Sweden abstained. In favor were Benin (formerly Dahomey), China, Japan, Libya, Pakistan, Panama, Rumania, Guyana, the Soviet Union and Tanzania.
The veto of the resolution, which called for Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories by June 1 next year, was the 16th cast by the United States in the 30-year history of the UN and the fourth so far this year. Three of the four American vetoes since January were against Mideast resolutions backed by the PLO and its supporters.
TOTALLY DEVOID OF BALANCE
Ambassador Albert W. Sherer Jr., acting United States Representative to the UN, told the Security Council before the vote that the text of the resolution “is totally devoid of balance, stressing the rights and interests of one party to the Middle East dispute and ignoring the rights and interests of other parties.” He also said that in the view of the U.S. government “the political interests of the Palestinians and their role in a final Mideast settlement constitute a matter that must be negotiated between the parties before it can be defined in resolutions of this Council.”
EXAMPLE OF MISERABLE BEHAVIOR
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, in a statement issued after the vote, said that the debate on the Palestine committee report was another example “of the miserable behavior of the United Nations under Arab instigation engaging in its paranoiac obsession with Israel while ignoring the human tragedy of Lebanon for the fifteenth month running. This was a PLO sponsored and instigated report and discussion in which members of the Security Council participated while the PLO was engaged in its traditional hijacking of innocent passengers and civilian planes and bringing death, slaughter and destruction to fellow Arabs in Lebanon.”
The American veto was seen here by diplomate and observers as another diplomatic defeat for the Arab anti-Israeli offensive at the UN. The Arabs are expected, however, to continue their offensive at the upcoming General Assembly meeting in September.
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