RAMALLAH — At this week's annual top-level UN General Assembly meetings, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is honoring a promise to the US to suspend a Palestinian quest for further UN recognition. But Palestinians have made clear that the strategy is not off the table, particularly if negotiations with Israel on Palestinian statehood don't produce an agreement by April, the target proposed by Washington. A poll published on Monday indicates overwhelming support among Palestinians for the most dramatic element of the “international strategy” — bringing up Israel on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court in connection with Israel's continued settlement-building on war-won lands that the Palestinians want for their state. For now, Abbas will stick to his promise to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who prodded Israelis and Palestinians back to negotiations in late July, after a five-year break. “We will not apply for any agency of the United Nations this time,” Riad Mansour, the head of the Palestinian mission at the UN, said of the General Assembly meetings that began Monday. This year's UN diplomacy is likely dominated by Syria's civil war and Iran's suspected nuclear ambitions. Abbas is addressing the plenum Thursday and is to meet a series of leaders. He is also set to talk with Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. A year ago, Abbas used the General Assembly gathering to lobby for recognition of Palestine as a nonmember observer state at the UN Two months later, the General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the request, recognizing a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — lands Israel occupied in 1967 — by a vote of 138-9, with 41 abstentions. Israel and the US objected, arguing that such recognition harms attempts to negotiate the terms of Palestinian statehood in Israeli-Palestinian talks, with US mediation. Talks between Abbas and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had broken down in 2008, and Abbas and Olmert's successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, failed to find sufficient common ground.– AP
