UN admissions committee forwards Palestinian bid report to Security Council

The UN Security Council's admissions committee on Friday forwarded to the 15-nation body its report on reviewing the Palestinian quest for full UN membership, the Council president told reporters here. "We held a meeting of the committee on admissions and the committee approved the report and forwarded it to the Security Council -- the report on the admission of Palestine to the United Nations," said Portuguese UN Ambassador Jone Filipe Moraes Cabral, who holds the rotating Security Council presidency for November. "The Council will receive the report and will discuss any future initiatives," he said. "We have already a very busy workload," he said. "We will be consulting with members of the Council and then deciding on the day we will meet in order to discuss this issue." The admissions committee, which groups all 15 Security Council members, began to review the Palestinian UN bid shortly after Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas formally presented the Palestinian application for full UN membership to UN Secretary- general Ban Ki-moon on Sept. 23. However, the Council president did not reveal any details of the report, which is expected to contain the viewpoints of the admissions committee on whether to accept or reject the Palestinian statehood bid. A draft report of the committee dwelled on the deadlock among Council members, diplomatic sources said here. The Council president did not say when the Security Council will vote on the report. Admission to the United Nations as a full member state requires a recommendation from the Security Council, with a majority of nine votes in favor and no veto from the five permanent members, namely Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.A submission would then go to the 193-member UN General Assembly, where approval would require a two-thirds votes in favor. The United States, a veto-wielding Council member and a close ally of Israel, threatens to veto the Palestinian bid on the ground that the Palestinian statehood should emerge from negotiations with Israel, not from acts by third parties or international groups. On Oct. 31, Palestine became the 195th full member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO). The UNESCO vote, which was 107 to 14, with 5 abstentions, defied a mandated cutoff of American funds under the U.S. federal legislation from the 1990s. UNESCO Director-general Irina Bokova told the UNESCO General Conference in Paris on Thursday that the UN cultural agency has temporarily suspended new programs in response to the U.S. decision to cut off funding due to the admission of Palestine as a full member. The United States contributes 22 percent of the financial resources of the UN agency.