UNITED NATIONS -- President Nicolas Sarkozy of France broke sharply on Wednesday with the effort by the Obama administration and some Europeans to quash the effort by the Palestinians for recognition here, instead calling for enhancing their status in the General Assembly to that of an observer state.
The French leader, speaking from the famous green marble podium of the General Assembly barely an hour after President Obama, also said it was time to change the formula in trying to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace, taking an indirect swipe at the United States by saying the efforts so far were a complete failure.
“Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “Let us begin negotiations and adopt a precise timetable.”
The timetable he suggested is resuming the negotiations in one month, agreeing on borders and security within six months and finishing a definitive agreement within one year.
The Palestinians have sought a specific timeline, suggesting that endless stalling was slowly erasing the chances for a two-state solution.
In the meantime, if the Palestinian effort at membership faces a Security Council veto, the deadly reverberations will be felt across the Arab world, Mr. Sarkozy warned.
"Each of us knows that Palestine cannot immediately obtain full and complete recognition of the status of United Nations member state," he said. "But who could doubt that a veto at the Security Council risks engendering a cycle of violence in the Middle East?"
The Palestinians currently have the status of an observer “entity” in the United Nations.
"Why not envisage offering Palestine the status of United Nations observer state?” said the French leader. “This would be an important step forward. Most important, it would mean emerging from a state of immobility that favors only the extremists.”
Recognition as an observer state would not mean much here except for some procedural changes, but it would allow the Palestinians to join subsidiary bodies and treaties of the United Nations.
Most Israeli concern has focused on the possibility that making the Palestinians an observer state could enhance their ability to join the International Criminal Court and pursue Israeli leaders through “lawfare.”
In choosing to go to the Security Council to seek full membership, Mr. Abbas chose a more difficult path but one that could get lost in the thicket of United Nations bureaucracy for months before the United States used its threatened veto. There is even a question if the Palestinians can muster the needed 9 votes.
But the United States has no veto over a General Assembly resolution, and the Palestinians enjoy overwhelming support there.