RAMALLAH (AFP) - The Palestinians will approach the UN Security Council in September to seek full membership in the global body, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reported.

“We are going to the Security Council through a request to the secretary general of the United Nations to seek full membership in the UN and recognition of Palestine on the 1967 borders,” he said.

Abbas made the remarks in an address to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) Central Council, which is meeting in Ramallah to endorse the United Nations membership bid.

He told the council that 122 nations had already recognised a Palestinian state on the lines that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War, which would include the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Abbas insisted that seeking UN membership did not contradict a commitment to negotiations, adding that the international community, including the Middle East Quartet of peacemakers, had proved incapable of pressuring Israel to halt settlement construction and accept the 1967 lines as a basis for peace talks.

“The choice of peace is our choice,” he said. “Our first, second and third choice is peaceful negotiations.”

“But after the failure of the Quartet to lay out foundations for the negotiations, which are a halt to settlement building and using the 1967 borders as a basis for the Palestinian state, it is now too late for negotiations,” he said, according to AFP.

“It is too late, there is no time - we are going to the UN.”

The Associated Press reported that Abbas called on his people to support the UN bid with “popular resistance”.

But he insisted that the protests should remain peaceful, according to AP.

The meeting of the PLO Central Council comes five days after Abbas convened a gathering of Palestinian diplomats in Istanbul to finalise the strategy for the membership bid.

The Central Council is the PLO’s most important decision-making body in the absence of the Palestinian National Council, the parliament-in-exile which rarely meets.

Palestinian officials say they are not planning on unilaterally proclaiming a state as they did in Algiers in 1988, nor will they seek recognition from the UN as a whole.

Instead, they will continue to work for endorsement on a state-by-state basis, while applying for membership in the global body, according to AFP.

‘Non-member state’

Approaching the Security Council would be the only way for the Palestinians to gain full membership in the UN.

But officials in Ramallah have indicated that they might also consider seeking General Assembly backing for an upgrade from their current observer status to that of a non-member state.

Such an upgrade would allow the Palestinians to join all the UN agencies, including the World Health Organisation, the child welfare agency UNICEF and the world heritage body UNESCO, according to AFP.

It could also provide an alternative for the Palestinians if the United States vetoes its bid for membership in the Security Council, as Washington has already threatened to do.

Ahead of Abbas’ speech, Israeli public radio said an internal meeting of Israeli foreign ministry officials had concluded that the Palestinians would seek recognition in the General Assembly and not risk a veto in the Security Council, AFP reported.

“They are going to take this path... They are going to play on the General Assembly,” Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor told the radio, adding that the Palestinians were still reluctant “to reveal their hand”.

“They can take this step in the last 48 hours before a vote,” he said.

“The United States for its part has restated its willingness to impose a veto at the Security Council,” Prosor added.

“We can only note that the Palestinians have yet to commence steps to submit a motion to the Security Council and that some Palestinian leaders, including [prime minister] Salam Fayyad object to a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state,” a foreign ministry official told AFP.