The UN General Assembly voted by an overwhelming majority yesterday to give Palestinians special observer status within the international organisation , despite US and Israeli opposition.
A total of 124 countries voted in favour of a resolution which confers upon the Palestinian delegation "additional rights and privileges". The United States, Israel, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands voted against the text, while 10 countries abstained.
According to the resolution, Palestinian representatives will now have "the right to participation in the general debate of the General Assembly" and to "co-sponsor draft resolutions and decisions on Palestinian and Middle East issues". But "Palestine shall not have the right to vote or to put forward candidates", it says. The resolution also stresses that the delegation will take on these new rights "in its capacity as observer".
The move was opposed by Washington. "This is the wrong resolution at the wrong time," the US ambassador to the UN, Mr Bill Richardson, said in a statement explaining the US position.
Before the vote, he warned that the move could further complicate efforts to relaunch the region's peace process, which has been blocked for 15 months.
The Israeli delegate, Mr Dore Gold, had also asked the General Assembly to reject the "symbolic change in status".
Such a move "contradicts the bilateral basis of the Arab-Israeli peace process begun in Madrid and it violates the principles of the Oslo Agreements" on Palestinian autonomy, he said.
At the insistence of European countries, the resolution presented by the Arab Group and non-aligned countries stresses the Palestinian delegation's continuing observer status.
According to the Austrian delegate, Mr Ernst Sucharipa, the 15 European Union member-states had wanted to ensure that all ambiguity be avoided, and did not want the vote to be interpreted as an implicit recognition of a Palestinian state.
Several hours before the vote, the Palestinian minister for planning and international co-operation, Mr Nabil Chaath, called the change a very important historic event, and said that it enhanced the credibility of his country's delegation.