UN vote on Palestine: Can Tony Blair prevent a diplomatic train wreck? (The Christian Science Monitor)

Washington – The Israeli and Palestinian leaders are headed for a showdown at the United Nations next week – unless former British Prime Minister Tony Blair succeeds in an apparent 11th-hour bid to table a controversial UN vote on Palestinian statehood.

Both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday they plan to address the UN in New York late next week – Mr. Abbas to seek approval of Palestine as a UN member state, Mr. Netanyahu to tell the UN General Assembly why in his view a vote on Palestine would ruin chances for Mideast peace.

The looming confrontation over Palestine – with the United States promising to use its veto if the question of UN membership as a full-fledged state reaches the Security Council – is being portrayed in various quarters from the US to Europe and beyond as a diplomatic train wreck waiting to happen.

RELATED: Top 5 issues on the table for Israeli-Palestinian talks

Some analysts warn of a day-after of confusion and dashed hopes that could spawn a new wave of Mideast violence.

It is in this climate of tension and foreboding that Mr. Blair is reportedly shopping around a plan to apply the traina€?s brakes and avoid a crash. Blair is the envoy of the Middle East Quartet, comprised of the US, the European Union, Russia, and the UN.

Under Blair’s proposal, the Palestinians would indeed present their bid for statehood, but to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Ban would take the proposal under advisement, with a commitment to present it for a vote in the General Assembly by the end of the year if the Israelis and Palestinians have not returned to direct negotiations by then.

The plan has several points in its favor:

‧ It allows the Palestinians to take their case for statehood to the UN – which the leadership says it is committed to doing – while avoiding a vote in the hothouse of the UN General Assembly’s opening week, when world leaders from President Obama to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be on hand.

‧ It avoids the prospect of a US veto, which many analysts say would damage the US role as an honest broker in the Mideast peace process and could poison American relations with Arab and Muslim countries.

a€￠ It opens the way for the resumption of direct negotiations which went nowhere after President Obama relaunched them in Washington last September.

Blair has presented his plan to Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week even as other diplomats have been shuttling to the region to try to avoid a UN vote and get back to direct peace talks.

Obama dispatched two diplomats, Mideast envoy David Hale and White House Mideast chief Dennis Ross, to the region again this week. The EU’s top foreign policy representative, Catherine Ashton, was also in talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah.

It was unclear late Thursday how coordinated the different diplomatic initiatives were or whether any of them was making headway.

In the meantime, confusion reigned over exactly what path the Palestinians were intending to take in New York in the absence of an accepted plan for putting off a statehood vote.

Palestinian leaders in Ramallah said their plan is to seek full UN membership – in other words, a Security Council vote – when Abbas speaks to the General Assembly Sept. 23.

“We have decided to submit our application for full membership,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki said Thursday. “At the same time,” he continued, “we have said that, until then, we are open to any kind of suggestions or ideas that could really come from any side for the renewal of negotiations.”

Hours later in New York, however, the Palestinians’ permanent observer to the UN, Riyad Mansour, told journalists that a decision has yet to be made on going for full membership through the Security Council or for some other form of UN representation through the General Assembly.

Mr. Mansour’s less categorical terms were interpreted by some analysts as a sign that a compromise was still possible.

Yet while Mr. al-Maliki also suggested that the statehood bid could ultimately be put off in favor of negotiations, he said that any such move would only be possible if the agreed direct negotiations came “with clear terms of reference, with a clear timetable and a clear end game.”

RELATED: Top 5 issues on the table for Israeli-Palestinian talks

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McConnell: Congress committed to prevent default (AP)

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama met for less than an hour Saturday with congressional leaders in debt crisis talks, and a leading Republican said afterward that top lawmakers were "committed to working on new legislation" to cut federal spending and avert an unprecedented U.S. default.

There were no immediate signs of a breakthrough, however. The lawmakers and Obama were unsmiling as the meeting began, and most of them avoided reporters when they left the White House.

In a statement released afterward, the White House said, "Congress should refrain from playing reckless political games with our economy. Instead, it should be responsible and do its job, avoiding default and cutting the deficit." The statement renewed Obama's insistence that any agreement tide the government over until after the 2012 elections, to avoid a rerun of the debt dispute in the heat of the campaign.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell issued a somewhat more upbeat statement of his own.

"The president wanted to know that there was a plan for preventing national default," he said. "The bipartisan leadership in Congress is committed to working on new legislation that will prevent default while substantially reducing Washington spending."

House Speaker John Boehner also pledged to work for a bipartisan solution.

"As I said last night, over this weekend Congress will forge a responsible path forward," he said in a statement. "House and Senate leaders will be working to find a bipartisan solution to significantly reduce Washington spending and preserve the full faith and credit of the United States."

The meeting followed a collapse in negotiations late Friday, when Boehner announced he was breaking off talks with the president. A visibly irritated Obama summoned Boehner and three other top congressional leaders from both parties to convene Saturday and try again to find a way to raise the debt limit before an Aug. 2 deadline cuts off the government's borrowing authority.

The president was flanked at the bargaining table by Boehner and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Also at the table were Vice President Joe Biden, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and McConnell, R-Ky.

The president devoted his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday to the impasse and urged Republicans to make a deal.

"We can come together for the good of the country and reach a compromise. We can strengthen our economy and leave for our children a more secure future," the president said. "Or we can issue insults and demands and ultimatums at each another, withdraw to our partisan corners and achieve nothing."

Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas said in his party's weekly address that the Democrats were to blame.

"If we're going to avoid any type of default and downgrade — if we're going to resume job creation in America — the president and his allies need to listen to the people and work with Republicans to cut up the credit cards once and for all," he said.

Boehner and McConnell also criticized Obama and the Democrats before the Saturday meeting began.

"If the White House won't get serious, we will," Boehner's office said. A statement from the office noted that Obama has said he wants an agreement that will take care of the problem through the November 2012 elections.

"It would be terribly unfortunate if the president was willing to veto a debt limit increase simply because its timing would not be ideal for his re-election campaign," according to Boehner's office.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee used the troubled talks to raise money with online appeals. An email from the group said that "after hard negotiating for two weeks" Boehner and other top GOP officials "irresponsibly just walked out of the room and quit talks with the White House."

The group said it was "launching a hard-hitting advertising campaign starting this weekend and continuing through August to hold Republicans accountable," but it gave no details.

At a news conference Friday after Boehner said he was withdrawing, Obama told reporters, "We have run out of time and they are going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default.

Boehner accepted the invitation for Saturday's meeting even while arguing that Obama bore the blame for the collapse.

The political theater played out even as the deadline neared. Barring action by then, the Treasury will be unable to pay its bills. That could cause interest rates to rise, threaten the U.S. economic recovery and send shock waves around the globe.

The deadline pressure hasn't seemed to bring the parties closer, even though they all insist they do not want a default.

For the first time since talks began, Obama declined to offer assurances that a default would be avoided, although moments later he said he was confident of that outcome.

Obama said Boehner left a deal on the table that was better for Republicans than for Democrats, with $2.6 trillion in cuts outweighing new tax revenue of $1.2 trillion. The president said he was losing confidence that the underlying deficit problems would be dealt with even if the borrowing limit rose.

"I've been left at the altar now a couple of times," Obama said.

Still, aides on both sides said there was agreement on gradually raising the age of eligibility of Medicare from 65 to 67 for future beneficiaries, and slowing the increase in cost-of-living raises in Social Security checks.

Republican aides said Obama had upped his demand for higher taxes during the week. The aides said administration officials had tacitly agreed to $800 billion in new revenue over 10 years but that the White House backed away and wanted $400 billion more.

Aides said the two sides were not able to bridge their differences over the triggers designed to force Congress to enact both tax changes and cuts to Medicare and other benefit programs by early next year. Both sides also were apart on the size of cuts for Medicaid, the health care program for the poor and disabled.

Yet aides on both sides said the negotiations had yielded agreement for cuts of $250 billion from Medicare.

___

Associated Press writers Erica Werner, David Espo, Ben Feller and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

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