Arens Criticizes U.S. for U.N. Resolution : Mideast: Israeli ‘troubled’ by U.S.-Arab work on draft opposing Soviet Jews settling in occupied areas.

Foreign Minister Moshe Arens today criticized the United States for coordinating with Arab states in drafting a U.N. resolution opposing settlement of Soviet Jews in occupied areas.

“I am troubled by the activity of the United States when the Arab countries raise in the U.N. Security Council the issue of immigration from the Soviet Union,” Arens said on Israel radio.

Arens, who indicated U.S.-Israel relations were at a low point, took the unusual step of summoning U.S. Ambassador William Brown on Wednesday night to protest the U.S. activity.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Amihud said Israel objected to the U.S. effort to formulate a resolution because it encouraged “the Arab attack on the right of Jews to immigrate to Israel.”

A key paragraph of the working draft composed by non-aligned and Arab states claims that settlement violates international law, a stronger wording than the U.S. position, which contends that settlements are an obstacle to peacemaking.

“Israel’s policy and practices of settling part of its population and new immigrants in those (occupied) territories are in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention . . . and it is a serious obstruction to achieving a just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” the Arab draft says.

The draft document grew out of a call in March by the Soviet Union for a debate on the settlement of Soviet Jews in occupied territory.

A U.N. vote on a settlement resolution, which had been scheduled for today, was postponed with no new date set.

Israeli officials said the United States should veto the resolution because it was part of a “political warfare” being waged by Arabs, who are opposed to all immigration to Israel and not just to the war-won lands.

In the past, the United States has vetoed most anti-Israel resolutions, but officials said that this time U.N. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering has been seeking agreed-on language with the Arabs. He proposed various changes earlier this week to soften the hard-line sections, but details were not available.

Arens referred to the increasing strain in Israel-U.S. relations, saying “there’s no doubt that at this moment we are going through a period of tension with the United States.”

He contrasted the troubled relationship with the Bush Administration to the more sympathetic treatment Israel received under former President Ronald Reagan.

“We have had differences of opinion with the United States on certain subjects for many years, with this Administration especially, in all that is connected to settlements,” Arens said.

Despite U.S. expressions of concern, right-wing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s caretaker government helped fund a Jewish settlement in Jerusalem’s Old City, and started two new ones in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

There are more than 70,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where 1.7 million Arabs live.

Gad Ben Ari, spokesman for the Jewish Agency which assists immigrants, said only about 200 Soviet Jews, about one-third of 1%, had chosen to live in the occupied territories in the last year.

He said about 1,000 had chosen to live in Jerusalem, but no figures were available on how many are in Israeli-annexed Arab East Jerusalem, where 120,000 Jews and 130,000 Arabs live.