The Palestinian observer to the United Nations has criticised the Security Council for failing to act on the Middle East crisis.
Speaking at the council's first open debate to discuss violence in the region in five months, Mr Nasser al-Kidwa said it was difficult to believe, and impossible to justify, the fact that the Security Council had taken no action since the start of the Palestinian uprising on September 28th last.
He called on the council to adopt a draft resolution to end 11 months of bloodshed in the region, which has claimed more than 700 lives.
The acting US ambassador to the UN, Mr James Cunningham, said his government remained opposed to rhetoric and attempts to condemn one side only with unbalanced resolutions.
Both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have endorsed a report, compiled by a five-man international commission led by former US senator Mr George Mitchell, but each has accused the other of a selective reading of its recommendations.
Meanwhile, Ireland has called for the resumption of active and effective mediation in the Middle East.
Speaking in New York yesterday, Ireland's deputy permanent representative to the UN, Mr Gerard Corr, said it was now time that the obstacles to the implementation of the Mitchell report were removed.
There was an urgent need for a third-party monitoring system, he added.
He said the report had referred to the "humiliation and frustration" Palestinians endured every day because of living with the continuing effects of occupation. It had also underlined the difficulties that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, which the entire international community held as illegal, had presented to the peace process.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, is due to visit the Middle East next month.
