Abbas says he will hold Obama to UN membership pledge

Ramallah (dpa) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday he would hold United States President Barack Obama to his declaration at the United Nations in September, when he expressed hope that the state of Palestine would be a fully fledged member of the UN in 2011.

Addressing tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered in Ramallah to mark the sixth anniversary of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s death, Abbas said he has met all his obligations under the 1993-94 Oslo interim peace accords, but that Israel has not.

“I challenge anyone who says we did not implement all our obligations,” he said. “We met all our obligations, but Israel did not implement even one of its obligations.”

He criticized US and Israeli statements that he would be taking unilateral action by going to the UN Security Council to complain against Israeli settlements in the West Bank or demand recognition of the June 4, 1967 lines as the borders of a future Palestinian state.

“I said we will go to the Security Council and they started saying that it was a unilateral action even before I went,” he said.

“Israel is doing unilateral actions daily in its construction of the separation wall and the settlements, but this is not called unilateral,” he added.

Arafat, the symbol of the Palestinian struggle for statehood, died in a Paris hospital on November 11, 2004.