The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. confirmed Israel asked the Bush administration to pull a resolution hailing the Annapolis summit.
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was on the hot seat this week after the Bush administration pulled a draft resolution on Nov. 30 hailing the peace conference that he had submitted to the U.N. Security Council.
Khalilzad told Reuters on Tuesday that he believed the decision to pull the resolution came from “the highest level” of the Israeli government. Israeli and Palestinian officials said last week they had seen the draft resolution. Though the Israelis told the press they had no objection to the text, they argued that a Security Council resolution was an inappropriate measure.
“There was a concern that some had whether, if a draft resolution was introduced, other things would be brought in by interested members of the council that would make it more complicated than a simple welcoming and endorsing of what had happened,” Khalilzad told Reuters.
The ambassador was quick to deny media reports that he had submitted the draft to the Security Council without approval from the State Department.
“We don’t just write a text in the mission and come and present it to people,” he said. “We are an organized government, institutionalized. We are not a banana republic.”
