UN sets quick vote on text condemning Gaza attack

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 11 (Reuters) The UN Security Council scheduled today vote on a draft resolution condemning a deadly Israeli attack in Gaza after Arab states agreed on Friday to significantly weaken the text.

''We cannot sit and just watch,'' Qatar's UN ambassador,Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser, told reporters, referring to Wednesday's Israeli strike that killed 18 civilians, including seven children and four women, in Beit Hanoun.

Israel has apologized for what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called an accidental ''technical failure'' by its military, but Palestinian leaders have called it a massacre.

Arab states initially asked the council to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and a UN observer force to enforce the cease-fire, as was done in southern Lebanon after the 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah that ended in August.

A new draft circulated yesterday, based on changes suggested by low-level council diplomats, dropped both the cease-fire call and a UN observer force.

The new text would instead call on the Palestinian Authority to ''take immediate and sustained action to bring an end to violence, including the firing of rockets on Israeli territory.'' It also would urge the international community to take steps to stabilize the situation, revive the Middle East peace process and consider ''the possible establishment of an international mechanism'' for the protection of civilians.

Both the original text and the revised version call on Israel to end its military operations immediately in Palestinian areas and pull its troops out of Gaza.

The United States has not publicly stated its position on the draft but likely would veto it, council diplomats said.

Washington routinely opposes council intervention in the Middle East as ineffective in ending the cycle of violence there, and has been anything but shy to exercise its veto power on Arab-backed resolutions.

''We don't think that any sort of one-sided resolutions are really the most productive way to address this issue,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington on Thursday.

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