Arab governments to take Gaza back to UN

CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab governments will take their case for an end to Israel's attacks on Gaza back to the U.N. Security Council, a ministerial statement said on Wednesday.

After a meeting of Arab ministers in Cairo, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said the ministers strongly condemned what they called the barbaric Israeli aggression, which has killed close to 400 people since it began on Saturday.

"(The ministers) convey an immediate demand that the U.N. Security Council convene and ask it to issue a resolution which binds Israel to immediately stop the aggression," he said, reading from the ministerial statement.

Several of the participants said the outcome of the meeting feel short of expectations. "None of us are satisfied with this," said Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

But a U.N. spokesman said later that the U.N. Security Council would meet at 2300 GMT on Wednesday, about three hours after the Arab ministerial meeting ended. It was not clear if the U.N. meeting was in response to the Arab proposal.

The Arab governments will ask a delegation of Arab ministers, including the Saudi and Libyan ministers, to go to New York to press for U.N. action, Prince Saud said.

They will seek a U.N. resolution that provides for international observers to guarantee that a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza is maintained, the statement said. Israel has rejected proposals for U.N. monitors in Gaza.

The U.N. Security Council called on Sunday for an immediate end to all violence in Gaza but Israel also dismissed that.

The ministers welcomed Syrian and Yemeni calls for an Arab summit but will not decide on holding one until they have seen the response to the Arab League's approaches to the Security Council, Prince Saud said.

The resolution largely reflected the positions of conservative Arab governments friendly toward the United States and the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas.

One delegate said that Syria, which is allied with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, proposed that the ministers call on Egypt to open its border with Gaza, closed most of the time since Hamas took control of the coastal strip in June.

But the proposal, which would mark a dramatic change in Egyptian policy of cooperating in the Israeli blockade, was quickly rejected with little argument, the diplomat said.

The conservatives, wary of Hamas, are the dominant force in the Arab League. Hamas's other allies, such as the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, have no place among the Arab governments.

While Arab protesters have demanded that Egypt open the border, the Arab ministers welcomed the fact that Egypt had let some humanitarian supplies cross into Gaza.

At a news conference after the meeting, Prince Saud and Moussa faced hostile questioning from Arab journalists who said their response was inadequate.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, in a break shortly before the meeting ended, agreed. "I can't say I'm completely satisfied as an Arab citizen, but this is what we could come up with," he told reporters.

Prince Saud said: "We do not think the blood spilled and the words written in the statement are commensurate. The most important thing to us is an immediate end to the fighting."

"I really don't understand why it is considered a weakness to go to the Security Council. On the contrary, I think it is a sign of self-confidence," he added.

(Reporting by Mohamed Abdellah and Aziz El-Kaissouni, Writing by Jonathan Wright)