Arabs lobby for UN votes   By Irwin Arieff July 16, 2004 Swiss Radio International http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5088349 http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5088349 UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Arab states have lobbied the 25-nation European Union in search of broad support for their draft U.N. resolution demanding that Israel obey a World Court ruling and tear down its West Bank barrier wall. Palestinian and other Arab diplomats met with EU officials for a third straight day of closed-door talks on changes in the draft text demanded by Europe to win its votes in Friday's emergency session of the 191-nation U.N. General Assembly. Arab envoys painted the vote as a referendum on the force of international law while Israel and its chief ally, the United States, argued that the International Court of Justice in The Hague had ignored legitimate Israeli security concerns and was further undermining the ailing peace process. Even without the EU, U.N. diplomats said the resolution would easily win a majority, but Arab states hoped to keep abstentions and no votes to a minimum to bolster an expected later plea for sanctions against Israel if it carries out its vow to ignore the ruling. The EU bloc could bring along with it as many as 25 other countries, making it the focus of intense Arab lobbying efforts. But so far, Palestinian U.N. observer Nasser al-Kidwa was standing firm, diplomats said. It depends on whether we can get enough improvements, one EU diplomat involved in the talks said on Thursday. It is still an open question whether they will be flexible enough. 'LEGAL OBLIGATIONS' The assembly agreed to meet after the court, the top U.N. legal forum, said in an advisory opinion last Friday that the planned 370-mile (600-km) barrier violates international law by cutting into West Bank land occupied and dotted with settlements by Israel since the 1967 Middle East War. The Arab draft would ask the assembly to reaffirm the illegality of any territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force and would demand that Israel comply with its legal obligations under the court opinion. It would also ask Switzerland, as keeper of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to convene a meeting of parties to the treaty to ensure it was being observed. The 1949 pact deals with the protection of civilians in time of war. A key provision bars governments from building settlements on land acquired by force. EU diplomats criticised the draft for failing to mention Israel's security needs or the quartet of Middle East mediators -- the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia -- and their road map to a political settlement of the crisis. Some EU members, joined by Israel and the United States, have also expressed concern over a part of the ruling rejecting Israel's argument that it could build the security barrier for self-defence as set out in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. The court said Israel could not invoke Article 51 because the attacks against which it was defending did not come from another state. That reasoning would appear to deny Washington, for example, the right to go after al Qaeda in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. In the world we live in today, it's not so much the threat of a state attacking another state, it's the threat of individuals or groups or non-state entities conducting the attacks, U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said this week. Danforth, who took up his U.N. duties just last week, said Washington opposed the court opinion and draft resolution.