Palestinian President Yasser Arafat asked the Security Council on Friday to send a UN force to protect Palestinians from Israeli troops, but said he might accept a French proposal for unarmed observers instead.
Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, came in person to appeal for 2,000 armed military observers on a day when the death toll from six weeks of bloodshed in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza rose above 200.
Arafat conferred in private for an hour and a half with ambassadors of the 15 council member states, who then held a separate meeting with the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Yehuda Lancry.
Lancry later told reporters that Israel "strongly opposes any kind of international involvement," and insisted on the need to resume direct, bilateral peace talks with the Palestinians.
A Palestinian spokesman said Arafat had "reiterated the strong request" for a protection force made by the Palestinian Observer to the UN, Nasser Al-Kidwa, in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday.
The US ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, said the United States would oppose any proposal which did not have Israeli support.
"We are not going to support something that has been unilaterally proposed without ever having been discussed by the other side, directly," he said.
Asked whether the United States, one of five permanent members of the council, would veto the proposal, Holbrooke noted that it had not yet been submitted as a draft resolution.
The Palestinian spokesman, Marwan Jilani, said Arafat had "left the door open" for discussing an alternative idea floated by the French ambassador to the UN, Jean-David Levitte, for an unarmed observer force.
The French proposal, which has British support, was for an unspecified number of observers "armed only with cameras" to monitor the situation.
French diplomats said the observer would be mobile and would be charged with reporting violence "whatever its source."
The observers would report to Annan and to the Security Council, but also to the Israeli and Palestinian authorities, they said.
They would also be mandated as "a mission of good offices" to facilitate direct or indirect contacts between the Israeli army and the Palestinian police, the diplomats said.
Lancry described the French proposal as "a softened formula of the Palestinian demand" and added: "We remain opposed to any bypassing of our bilateral approach."
He said Israel and the Palestinians were both "committed to a bilateral, direct peace process, and we would like not to waste too much energy in a process which would run against the peace spirit."
Jilani retorted that "the developments of the past few weeks speak for themselves. Bilateral negotiations have failed," he added.
The meetings in the council coincided with another "day of rage" in the West Bank and Gaza, in which three Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were shot and killed.
"We have exhausted all possibilities of bilateral effort in order to de-escalate the situation," Jilani said. "It is time now for the international community to step in and protect the Palestinian civilians."
Asked why the Palestinians had not consulted Israel, he replied:
"We don't think this is a traditional peacekeeping force that would require the consent of the Israelis. This is an occupied territory."
He added: "We are calling on the Security Council to take its responsibilities towards Palestinian civilians."
Holbrooke backed the Israeli call for the resumption of direct peace talks with the Palestinians.
"We are in a period of extraordinary danger," Holbrooke went on, but he added that there was no alternative to peace.
"They are either going to have live together or keep killing each other. In the long run there is only one outcome, which is peace," he said.
After his meeting with the council, Arafat had a short meeting with the UN deputy secretary general, Louise Frechette, before departing. He passed a phalanx of waiting reporters but did not stop to speak.
UN officials said he was due to return to Gaza on Friday evening – UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
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