UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) — The UN Security Council admission committee is scheduled to meet behind closed doors on Thursday to discuss the Palestinian bid for full UN membership, the council president announced here Wednesday.
The announcement came as Jone Filipe Moraes Cabral, the Portuguese permanent representative to the United Nations who holds the rotating council presidency for November, was briefing reporters here on the work of the 15-nation Security Council in this month.
The council meeting, scheduled to begin at 03:00 p.m. (2100GMT) on Thursday, will be the first gathering of the admission committee at the level of permanent representatives to review the Palestinian statehood bid since the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted overwhelmingly on Monday to approve full membership for the Palestinians.
The Security Council will also have the first open meeting since Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas formally presented the UN membership application to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sept. 23, he said.
"We had informal meetings at expert level," he said, adding that "this will be the first formal meeting" since the Palestinian bid was presented.
At the upcoming meeting, each council member is expected to " say what they think about the conditions of the admissibility of Palestine to the UN," he said.
Afterwards, "we, with the collaboration of the (UN) Secretariat, will draft a report and the report will mirror what positions during the meetings of the council were," he said. "It is this report which is presented at the next meeting of the admission committee and this meeting on the third (of November) is not a meeting of the Security Council it's a meeting of the admission committee at the permanent representative level."
The UNESCO is the first UN agency to admit Palestine. However, the first step towards full membership in the United Nations cannot guarantee that the road in front of Palestine is clear of all obstacles, as the UNESCO and the United Nations have different admission processes.
Procedure in the world organization calls for the Security Council to "recommend" the application to the UN General Assembly before the 193-member body.
If it fails to garner nine votes in the council, without a negative vote by one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, it dies.
The United States, one of the five permanent council members and a close ally of Israel, already stated publicly that it will veto the Palestinian bid at the Security Council because Washington holds that the Palestinian statehood should emerge from negotiations with Israel.
The admission committee started to meet on the Palestinian bid just days after the formal presentation of the application to the UN. The committee has at least three months to review the Palestinian statehood bid before it reports to the Security Council.
"The pace is not slow" in the council's work to review the Palestinian application, he said, adding that the Palestinian case is "not comparable" to that of South Sudan, in which the Security Council and the UN General Assembly moved very quickly to admit South Sudan as a new UN member just days after it applied for the membership.
Special Report: Palestine-Israel Conflicts
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