Palestinian President Abbas to address UN Security Council on peace plan

Palestine’s Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour listens to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting at the UN in New York. (File/AFP)

UNITED NATIONS: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will speak in the United Nations Security Council in the next two weeks about the US Middle East peace plan, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said on Wednesday.
Mansour told reporters he hoped the 15-member Security Council, at the same meeting that Abbas would address, would vote on a draft resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
However the United States is certain to veto any such resolution, diplomats said. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by permanent members United States, China, Russia, Britain or France to be adopted.
"We will try our best with our friends to have the strongest possible draft resolution and to receive the strongest and largest possible voting in favor of that resolution," Mansour said. He did not give details of what might be in the text.
"Of course we would like to see a strong, large opposition to this Trump plan," he said with Tunisian U.N. Ambassador Moncef Baati, currently serving a two-year term on the Security Council, standing beside him.
He said Abbas would use his visit to the United Nations in New York to "put before the entire international community the reaction of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian leadership against this onslaught against the national rights of the Palestinian people by the Trump administration."