US vetoes UN resolution condemning Israel on Gaza

July 13, 2006

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday vetoed a
U.N. Security Council resolution put forward by Qatar on behalf of Arab states that would have condemned Israel's two-week military incursion into Gaza.

The vote on the draft resolution was 10-1, with the United States voting no, and four countries abstaining -- Britain, Denmark, Peru and Slovakia.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Washington had voted against the text because it was "untimely and already outmoded."

A resolution requires at least nine votes -- and no veto from any of the council's five permanent members -- for approval. The five are Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

The veto was the first by the United States since October 2004 when former Ambassador John Danforth opposed a resolution calling on Israel to end an earlier incursion into Gaza.

It was Bolton's first veto on any issue since he arrived at U.N. headquarters as Washington's top envoy nearly a year ago.

Israel and the United States, its closest ally, had lobbied hard for the measure's defeat, hoping to let it die for lack of support rather than exercise a U.S. veto.

But in the end, the measure attracted more than enough votes for adoption, requiring Bolton to kill it.

The resolution would have demanded the unconditional release of an Israeli soldier captured earlier as well as Israel's immediate withdrawal from Gaza and the release of dozens of Palestinian officials detained by Israel.

Palestinian U.N. Observer Riyad Mansour had argued that the council should view the Gaza action as separate from the crisis along the Israeli-Lebanese border created when Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and Israel retaliated with a wave of military strikes on Lebanon.

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