bama shuts the door on Palestinian UN bid

US president Barack Obama rejected Palestinian plans to seek UN blessing for statehood as he tried to avert a looming crisis that could erode Washington's global standing and further isolate its close ally Israel.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, Mr Obama insisted that Middle East peace "will not come through statements and resolutions" at the world body, and put the onus on the two sides to break a year-long impasse and return to peace talks.
With Palestinians determined to force a vote on full membership at the UN at the end of this week, there are frantic moves behind the scenes to prevent a showdown.
Mr Obama delivered his speech at the same podium where he called for an independent Palestine one year ago.

"I believed then and I believe now that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said was that a genuine peace can only be realised between the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves," he said.
"Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately it is Israelis and Palestinians, not us, who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them.
"There is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades."
Mr Obama's speech offered no new prescriptions for relaunching negotiations and French president Nicolas Sarkozy later sought to take the initiative, putting forward an ambitious timetable to resume peace talks within a month and achieve a definitive deal in a year.
Mr Sarkozy told Israel it "cannot remain immobile" in the deadlocked peace process while "this wind of freedom and democracy blows across your region," adding the Arab protesters were not calling for Israel's destruction.
"Why not envisage offering Palestine the status of United Nations observer state? This would be an important step forward," he asked.
The Palestinians are frustrated by the lack of progress over the past 12 months and say they will ask the Security Council to grant them statehood on Friday, even though the US has a veto on the council and has vowed to use it.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas held his head in his hands while Mr Obama spoke, while others in the delegation shook their heads.
Mr Obama followed his speech with a round of talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who echoed the president's assertion that negotiations were the only path to a peace deal but offered no new ideas on how to restart talks.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Mr Netanyahu congratulated his US counterpart for what he called a principled stand.
"I think this is a badge of honour," he said, predicting the Palestinians' UN bid "will not succeed."
"The Palestinians deserve a state but it’s a state that has to make that peace with Israel," he said.
"Therefore their attempt to shortcut this process and not negotiate peace, that attempt to state membership in the United Nations, will not succeed."
In a separate meeting, Mr Obama appealed to Mr Abbas not to present UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with an application for full membership of the world body.
Key aide, Yasser Abed Rabbo, voiced disappointment over Mr Obama's speech.
"There is a gap between praising the struggle of Arab peoples for the sake of freedom and between an abstract call for negotiations between us and the Israelis ... freedom should cover the (whole) region," he said.
Mr Obama has also scheduled a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk says it is ironic that a US president who had wanted to be on the right side of Arab history had ended up in this position.
"One has to wonder the logic of the Palestinians' move here, because it is, in effect, driving the president into the arms of the Israeli prime minister - which is not exactly where he intended to be at this moment," he said.
But Mr Obama is juggling domestic political demands as well as his international obligations, and with the election a year away he cannot afford to lose the influential Jewish vote.
There now appears to be little doubt that the Palestinians will put their application for statehood forward on Friday in New York.
Behind the scenes the US and others are trying to work on way to delay the vote and allow peace talks to resume once again.