Palestinians win a vote to enter UNESCO as a full member Palestinians were set to win a crucial vote to enter UNESCO as a full member on Monday, scoring a symbolic victory ahead of a vote on Palestine joining the UN General Assembly in New York .
The United States and Israel are opposed to the move, which will plunge the UN cultural body into crisis as they withdraw their funding, and could have a knock-on effect, forcing other UN agencies to debate the thorny issue.
\"We think it\'s counterproductive, it\'s a premature step,\" US Undersecretary for Education Martha Kanter told the general assembly ahead of the vote that requires a two-thirds majority of its 193 voting members to succeed.
Israel\'s ambassador to UNESCO, Nimrod Barkan, said that his country was resigned to a Palestinian victory.
\"There will be a vote and the Palestinians will win,\" Barkan told AFP. \"That\'s the headcount that we have.\"
Staunch Israel ally the United States in the 1990s banned the financing of any United Nations organisation that accepts Palestine as a full member, meaning the body would lose $70 million, or 22 percent of its annual budget.
Barkan said that Israel would likely join the US in withdrawing funds -- another around three percent of UNESCO\'s budget -- although \"it will make it impossible for UNESCO to fulfil its mission.\"
\"I don\'t think we will continue to pay our annual dues and we will follow the Americans in this, so about a quarter of funding will be taken away.\"\\par
Barkan admitted that the vote, while symbolic, could have a knock-on effect: \"There is potential for a cascading effect of this resolution on many other UN specialised agencies and in New York.\"
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas submitted the request for membership of the UN General Assembly in September, and the Security Council is to meet on November 11 to decide on whether to hold a formal vote on the application.\\par
But while as a permanent UN Security Council member the US has a veto that it says it will exercise at the UN General Assembly, no one has a veto at UNESCO.\\par
Arab states braved intense US and French diplomatic pressure to bring the motion before the UNESCO executive committee in October, which passed it by 40 votes in favour to four against, with 14 abstentions.
The four votes against came from the US, Germany, Romania and Latvia, while most of the abstentions were from European nations.\\par
The Palestinians currently have observer status at UNESCO.
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki was due to address UNESCO\'s general assembly on Monday, with UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova saying Friday she was very concerned about the possible withdrawal of US funding.
\"This would have serious consequences, programmes would have to be cut, our budget would have to be rebalanced,\" she told AFP in an interview.
\"The US administration supports UNESCO, but (the Americans) are trapped by laws adopted 20 years ago,\" Bokova said, adding that she was \"neutral\" on the question of Palestinian membership.
The United States only returned to UNESCO in 2003, having boycotted the organisation since 1984 over what State Department calls \"growing disparity between US foreign policy and UNESCO goals.\"
Despite the 20-year US boycott, President Barack Obama now considers UNESCO a strategic interest and Washington sees it as a useful multilateral way to spread certain Western values.
The Europeans want to convince the Palestinians to be satisfied for now with joining three UNESCO conventions, including on World Heritage, which is possible for a non-member state.