Palestinians to push UN bid despite Obama, protests erupt

President Barack Obama told the United Nations yesterday there was no short cut to Middle East peace but Palestinians said they would press on with a request for UN recognition of their nascent state.

With US sway in the Middle East at stake, Obama had hoped to dissuade the Palestinians from asking the Security Council for statehood despite Israeli wrath and a US veto threat. But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seems determined to pursue his plan to hand an application for statehood to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon tomorrow.

Asked if Abbas had given any sign he might change course, Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said: "He has been very clear what his intent is ... which is to go to the Council and to begin the process of securing membership there."

Obama's opposition to the Palestinians' bid for membership of the United Nations is turning their deep disappointment with his Middle East policy to outright anger.

A few hundred protesters took to the streets of Ramallah today after Obama's speech to the gathering the night before. "It was totally disappointing, not only to us but to many people in this world. It was full of double standards," said Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician and activist who ran for the presidency in 2005.

Demonstrators contrasted Obama's support for freedom in the Arab world with what they saw as meek words on their struggle for self-determination on land occupied by Israel in 1967.

Amid frantic efforts to avert a diplomatic disaster, French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the United Nations to grant the Palestinians the status of observer state, like the Vatican, while outlining a one-year roadmap to peace.

A year after telling the General Assembly he hoped to see a Palestinian state born by now, the US president said creating such a state alongside Israel remained his goal.

"But the question isn't the goal we seek – the question is how to reach it. And I am convinced that there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades," he told the assembly.

Obama told Abbas in a meeting that UN action would not lead to a Palestinian state and that the United States would veto such a move in the Security Council, the White House said.Abbas' spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said the two leaders had reiterated their positions, without any apparent result.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to hold separate talks with Abbas and Netanyahu in the evening.