A key meeting of Non-Aligned Movement ministers that was to have taken place in the West Bank yesterday was cancelled after Israel denied several of them entry, officials said.
The ministers were to have attended a two-day meeting of the movement’s Palestine Committee in Ramallah, at which they were poised to sign a declaration in support of a fresh Palestinian bid for upgraded UN membership.
“After consultation between all the delegations in Amman and the Palestinian leadership, the Ramallah meeting of the Palestine Committee of the Non-Aligned Movement has been cancelled,” a senior Palestinian official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
It came shortly after Israel barred ministers from Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cubaand Algeria from travelling to Ramallah.
A senior Israeli official said the ban targeted five countries that have no diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
“A decision has been taken to bar the diplomatic representatives of several countries that do not recognise Israel from crossing the Israeli borders,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.
However, Algeria had earlier informed the Palestinian Authority it would not be sending a delegation to avoid friction at the Israeli-controlled frontier.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr condemned Israel’s “blatant action,” saying: “It is a flagrant violation of the principles of international law and of Israel’s obligations as the occupying power.
He told reporters in Amman: “This Israeli action highlights once again to NAM and to the whole international community the plight of the Palestinian people in their struggle to achieve full independence.”
Foreign ministers from the 13 countries on NAM’s Palestine Committee were to have signed the so-called ‘Ramallah Declaration’ supporting a Palestinian bid to upgrade their UN status from observer to non-member state.
On Saturday Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki called the statement “a political declaration that endorses and supports the Palestinian people’s right to have a state, condemns settlements and supports the Palestinian bid to obtain non-member status at the UN.”
The request will be put to the UN General Assembly on September 27, exactly a year after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas tried to obtain full member status.
Despite the high-profile effort, the request was never put to a vote in the UN Security Council, where the US had pledged to veto it.