29 December 2016 08:54 am
RT.COM/ 27 Dec, 2016 - Accusations by the Israeli ambassador that the US was behind the UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements are “just not true,” the US State Department said. Israel has blamed Washington for not vetoing the resolution.
Adopted on Friday, Resolution 2334 declared Israeli settlements in “Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including East-Jerusalem” to be a “flagrant violation” of international law.
“We reject the notion that the US was the driving force behind this resolution,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters at the daily press briefing Tuesday. “That’s just not true.”
Toner said that Palestinians worked with Egypt to formulate the resolution, and that Washington urged some changes to the text to “make it more balanced.”
“We ended up abstaining because we didn’t feel it was balanced enough,” Toner said.
He defended the resolution itself, however, saying that “there was nothing in there that would prompt us to veto.”