Israel removes UN child draft

NEW YORK - Israel has withdrawn a draft resolution on protecting Israeli children from terrorism, its first United Nations measure in 25 years, after Arab amendments threatened to derail the purpose of the document.

The target of hundreds of critical UN resolutions, Israel took the offensive by seeking a measure condemning attacks against Israeli children by Palestinian suicide bombers.

The General Assembly's human rights committee last week adopted a similar draft on protecting Palestinian children by a vote of 88 to 4 with 58 abstentions.

But Israel withdrew its own resolution after Egypt and other nations virtually rewrote the document in amendments that substituted "Middle East" for "Israeli" children and inserted language on Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands.

"We would have preferred that no group of children be singled out," Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman told the committee.

"But once the plight of Palestinian children has been reserved for special attention in a separate and situation-specific resolution, Israeli children certainly deserve no less."

He said the proposed amendments altered the title of the resolution, shifted its focus, erased every reference to Israel and singled out Israel "for negative treatment" when the resolution, instead, was designed to highlight the plight of children.

"We gave the United Nations a chance to elevate itself above petty politics and rise to a moral level," Gillerman told a press conference. "The UN has failed."

The amendments, which probably would have been approved, would have been put to a vote first, thereby derailing the original Israeli resolution.

In response, Palestinian envoy Nasser al-Kidwa told a separate news conference that there was a "huge difference" between the situation of Palestinian children and any other children in the world.

He said Palestinian children were deprived of every right included in a 1990 UN treaty on the rights of the child, beginning with the right of statehood up to the right of physical protection.

"The case is broader and has no comparison with Israeli children," al-Kidwa said. "That is why it did not have any chance."

Al-Kidwa said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was expected to produce a report tomorrow on Israel's construction of a huge barrier in the West Bank as requested by a General Assembly resolution.

After the report, he said he would ask the assembly next week to seek a legal ruling on the barrier from the International Court of Justice.

Israel last circulated a draft resolution to the General Assembly in December 1976, calling for a resumption of peace talks with Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

But it withdrew it three days later when amendments were introduced that would have included in the talks the Palestine Liberation Organisation, whose charter still called for Israel's destruction.

This year, Gillerman said, Israel was no longer going to react to Arab-initiated resolutions but take the offensive in the 191-member assembly that is traditionally sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

- REUTERS