United Nations: The United States on September 16 vetoed an Arab-backed UN Security Council resolution, which called on Israel to desist from any act of exiling Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and cease any threat to his safety, because it did not condemn terrorist organisations such as Hamas.

Eleven of the 15 members voted in favour of the resolution and Britain, Germany and Bulgaria abstained. But negative vote by the US killed the resolution, which the Council members had discussed for two days.

"It's a black day for the UN. I hope that Israel will not interpret the killing of this resolution as a licence to kill Arafat," Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erakat said after the vote.

Palestinian UN observer Nasser al-Kidwa said the US by defying the world opinion had lost its credibility to play an honest broker in the Middle East peace process.

Explaining the vote, US Ambassador John Negroponte said the US was against forced expulsion or elimination of Arafat, but could not support the resolution as it was "lop sided". The resolution should have also contained a robust condemnation of Palestinian terrorist organisations, he said.

Negroponte said the resolution did not contain language that would promote the peace process and "no useful purpose" would have been served by its passage.

Fayssal Mekdad, the UN ambassador of Syria, which is the only Arab nation on the Security Council, regretted the US veto, saying the resolution was "highly balanced" and its language came from previous resolutions adopted by the Security Council.

"It (the US veto) only complicates a situation in the Middle East that is already very complicated," he said.

Syria had been pressing for a vote since Israel's Security Cabinet decided last week to "remove" Arafat. At a Security Council meeting on September 15, almost all countries condemned Israel's threats against Arafat.

The veto came after two days of intensive discussions failed to bridge the gap between the position of the Arabs and that of the US.

The resolution called for "complete cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terrorism, provocation, incitement and destruction."

But it did not name Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the organisations, which according to Americans, had carried out terrorist attacks against Israel.

The resolution demanded that Israel, "the occupying power", desist from any "act of deportation" and cease any threat to the safety of the "elected President of the Palestinian Authority".

PTI