(AFP) – Jan 24, 2008

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The UN Security Council failed yet again on Thursday to agree a compromise statement urging an end to Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip and to the rocket attacks on the Jewish state.

After day-long talks by experts and ambassadors, it was agreed that a new attempt would be made Friday to overcome US objections to a text accepted by the council's 14 other members.

"We still do not have an agreement and the way it's going it's not hopeful," said South Africa's UN envoy Dumisani Kumalo. "But the president (of the council) has asked us to try again tomorrow (Friday)."

The United States, a staunch ally of Israel, insists that the crippling Israeli blockade of Gaza is a self-defense move in the face of rockets fired from the impoverished territory controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.

After consulting with Washington, the US delegation here on Thursday put forward a series of oral amendments, including a call for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants in 2006 and a condemnation of terrorism under all its forms.

But most of these amendments were deemed irrelevant and unacceptable by Arab countries which feel strongly that the council has to react to what they view as the "collective punishment" of Gaza's 1.5 million residents by Israel in reprisals for the rocket attacks.

"Our view is that getting a product will be difficult," US deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff told reporters after the consultations.

He added that his delegation would be prepared to accept "a balanced, credible, constructive statement that looks at this issue realistically," including condemning the rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.

Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman for his part dismissed the whole debate as a "futile waste of time" that only serves "to reward Hamas."

"Israel should take note that 14 members of the Security Council, a significant number of them friends of Israel, are saying that this humanitarian situation in Gaza cannot be tolerated," the Palestinian observer to the UN, Ryad Mansour, retorted.

And Syrian Ambassador Bashar Jaafari accused the United States of trying to politicize a humanitarian issue and of "trying to turn the victims into victimizers and the victimizers into victims."

He warned that if Washington manages to block a consensus on the non-binding statement, Arab countries were likely to turn the text into a resolution and dare the United States to veto it.

The latest version of the draft expresses "deep concern about the steep deterioration of the humanitarian situation" in Gaza due to the Israeli blockade.

It "calls on all parties to immediately cease all acts of violence, including the firing of rockets into Israeli territory and all activities which are contrary to international law and endanger civilians," a reference to the Israeli siege.

And it takes note of Israel's decision "to suspend the closure of the crossing points (into Gaza) and calls for it to be fully implemented."

Thursday, Arab League chief Amr Mussa described the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip as a "campaign to starve the people there."

Speaking on the sidelines of the Davos meeting in Switzerland, he also said that the Gaza blockade undermined the already struggling peace process revived after the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis in the United States.

Thursday, desperate Palestinians swarmed out of Gaza into Egypt for a second consecutive day to stock up on supplies after militants blew open the border of the Hamas-run territory.

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council criticized Israel for its blockade in a resolution that EU member states on the council abstained from voting on, citing a lack of balance.

The resolution, passed by a vote of 30 to one, called for "urgent international action to put an immediate end to the grave violations committed by the occupying power, Israel, in the occupied Palestinian territory".

On Tuesday Israel allowed in shipments of cooking gas and fuel to power Gaza's sole power station, which had ground to a halt on Sunday night.

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