U.S. Joins U.N. Council in 2nd Rebuke of Israel : Mideast: The resolution deplores Jerusalem’s rejection of investigation of Temple Mount killings.

Underscoring growing strains between traditional allies, the United States voted Wednesday to support a U.N. Security Council resolution deploring the refusal of Israel to allow a U.N. mission to visit Jerusalem to investigate the killing of 21 Palestinians earlier this month.

It was the second time in less than two weeks that the Bush Administration has sided against Israel in the Security Council. On Oct. 12 the United States, usually a staunch defender of Israel, joined in unanimously condemning that nation for the killings on the Temple Mount.

The latest vote by the Administration against Israel came as the United States again was forced to decide between offending the Israelis or keeping the allegiance of Arab nations aligned against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In Wednesday’s resolution, the council expressed alarm at the refusal of the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to accept a mission from U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. It also said it was “gravely concerned” about the continued deterioration of the situation in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The council urged Israel to reconsider its decision and insisted that it permit the mission.

“I am very pleased to see that the unanimity that the council achieved when it adopted the original resolution has been maintained,” said the Security Council’s current president, British Ambassador David Hannay. “ . . . I think it sends a stronger signal when the council adopts a resolution unanimously, particularly in this area, which so often has been the object of divisions in the council.

“The principal loser in not receiving this mission will be Israel itself,” he added.

Before the vote, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Johanan Bein, charged that the Oct. 8 rioting in Jerusalem--in which Palestinians hurled rocks at Jews worshiping at the Western Wall and police and security forces opened fire--was deliberately instigated by the Palestine Liberation Organization as a means of diverting world attention from the Persian Gulf crisis.

“Something strange has happened. The momentum (against Iraq) has come to a screeching halt,” Bein said during a nearly hourlong impassioned defense of his government’s position. “For the moment, Saddam Hussein has been let off the hook.

”. . . It happens to be the oldest trick in the book: Blame the victim,” Bein added. “(The PLO) managed to touch off a storm of violence on the Temple Mount for all the world to see. . . . They knew perfectly well that this was the last thing Israel needed and the last thing anyone hoping to dislodge Iraq’s aggression could possibly hope for.”

Bein met briefly with reporters after the vote. “My basic reaction is we have seen this film before,” he declared.

On Friday, after more than a week of intense behind-the-scenes discussions, Perez de Cuellar told the council that he would not send a mission to Jerusalem under the present circumstances. He rejected suggestions by Israeli diplomats that his report be based in good measure on an independent Israeli commission inquiry into the Temple Mount violence.

The secretary general’s statement set the stage for Wednesday’s Security Council criticism. Colombia, Cuba, Malaysia and Yemen submitted a draft resolution demanding that the mission be allowed to travel to Jerusalem.

In a last-ditch attempt to head off the Security Council vote, President Bush had urged Shamir to reverse his position and agree to accept the U.N. investigation, thus making the latest resolution moot.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Bush wrote “that our preference would be . . . to find a way to let the secretary general’s mission come to Israel.” She said the letter, sent from the White House on Tuesday, mirrored what Bush has said publicly on the subject.

Tutwiler also confirmed that the Security Council’s decision to take up the second Israel resolution at all was a defeat for U.S. diplomacy, which had sought an early vote on a resolution condemning Iraq for its attempt to starve out embassies in Kuwait. American officials considered the Israel debate to be a needless distraction.

“We have got to grapple with this (Israel resolution) first, unfortunately,” Tutwiler said. “The United States’ position has been since last Friday that we would like to get the focus where it should be, back on the gulf.”

At one point in negotiations at the United Nations, the United States had backed a plan by Hannay that a milder Security Council statement be substituted for the resolution. But when the resolution’s sponsors demanded a vote, the idea of the statement was scotched.

The secretary general has until the end of the month to report on the violence in Jerusalem. And even as the council voted against Israel on Wednesday, diplomatic efforts to find a compromise were continuing.

Some Israeli diplomats suggested that once the internal three-member commission reports on the events in Jerusalem, that report could be given to a top aide of Perez de Cuellar, or perhaps the secretary general could send an envoy to Israel for clarifications.

Meanwhile, the slowing of momentum at the United Nations on the Persian Gulf issue was very much on some council members’ minds.

“We want to dispose of this problem of the mission to Jerusalem, and we have to return back to the main problem that confronts the Security Council,” said Yuli M. Vorontsov, the Soviet ambassador.

U.S. officials in Washington and at the United Nations said American diplomats are rounding up support for a new series of resolutions attacking Iraq that will be introduced as soon as the Israeli matter is disposed of.

The first U.S. priority is a resolution condemning Iraq’s refusal to permit embassies in Kuwait to receive food and water. All but three Western nations--the United States, Britain and France--have already succumbed to the pressure and closed their diplomatic missions in Kuwait. But those three nations are all permanent members of the Security Council.

The U.S. government hopes to follow the resupply resolution with measures setting the stage for war crimes trials of Hussein and his top aides and ordering Iraq to pay reparations to Kuwait. All three resolutions are purely symbolic because none could be enforced without the military defeat of the Iraqi army. But a senior U.S. official said that a Security Council vote to begin war crimes trials, for instance, might make Hussein think twice about additional aggression.

Officials at the United Nations said additional resolutions are being prepared to cut off telecommunications links between Iraq and the outside world and to order U.N. members to reduce the number of Iraqi diplomats at embassies worldwide.

U.S. officials concede, however, that none of the proposed resolutions will hurt Iraq nearly as much as the trade embargo that was invoked in August.