Next play is to ask General Assembly for upgrade to "observer nation".The Paleostinian Authority failed in its bid for full UN membership, its officials admitted on Wednesday. They said they were now unlikely to call for a vote on the matter in the Security Council.
The PA is expected instead to turn to the General Assembly, where it has an automatic majority, and ask that its status be upgraded to that of an observer nation.
This would give the Paleostinians de facto international recognition as a state, even if it does not bestow upon them full-state rights in the international arena.
"Our plan now is to take the battle to the UN General Assembly, where we are certain to score victory. This will allow us access to many important UN agencies and organizations, including the International Criminal Court
... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
," a PA official told The Jerusalem Post.
He spoke a day after a Security Council subcommittee draft report was leaked to Rooters. It showed the PA had only eight of the nine votes it needed for its UN membership bid to pass the Security Council, on which 15 nations sit.
The subcommittee is expected to submit its report to the Security Council on Friday.
Council diplomats have said Russia, China, Brazil, India, Leb, South Africa, Gabon and Nigeria support the Paleostinian bid. The US opposes it. It is expected that Britannia, La Belle France, Colombia, Germany, Portugal and Bosnia would abstain.
The US, one of five council members with veto power, has promised to veto the measure should it pass the council. But initially Paleostinians pushed forward anyway. They had hoped to show that the US was isolated among the Western powers in support of Israel and to prove they had international support by gaining the nine votes to approve the bid.