US, Israel under fire at UN

Dozens of countries condemned the assassination of Hamas official Abdelaziz Rantissi on Saturday, which came just three weeks after Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed in another Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip.

Arab nations presented a strongly worded draft resolution all but certain to draw another veto from the United States, which blocked a similar measure in the council after Yassin was killed.

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"I think the draft resolution is quite outspoken," said the Security Council president, German ambassador Gunter Pleuger. He said discussions on the draft would begin on Tuesday.

Frustration with US policy on Israel has intensified since President George W. Bush said last week that Israel should be allowed to keep part of the West Bank in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

"Israel, the occupying power, continues its reign of terror," Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative to the United Nations, told the council during a two-hour public session.

He said Israel's claim that targeting militant Palestinian leaders for assassination constituted part of the fight against terrorism was inappropriate and inaccurate.

"It's about Israel's refusal to end this ocupation, seeking all the while to acquire more land by force and to eliminate more of the indigenous population," Kidwa said.

Israeli UN ambassador Dan Gillerman said the killing of Rantissi was "not merely a defensive act" but "part of the global struggle against terrorism that has been thrust upon all of us." He called Rantissi "a trader in death."

After hosting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week, Bush backed his plan for a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip which would at the same time allow Israel to keep some West Bank land it captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Diplomats said the announcement effectively tried to dismiss long-standing and legally binding UN resolutions calling for an end to the Israeli occupation, and to pre-determine the borders of any future Palestinian state.

"The legal basis for a settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict has been defined" in those resolutions, said Russia's deputy UN ambassador, Gennady Gatilov.

But his US counterpart James Cunningham said the United States has "no intention of prejudicing" the outcome of any future peace talks between the two sides.