The United State has once again vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israeli settlements as "illegal" and called for an immediate halt to all settlement building.
All 14 other Security Council members voted in favour of the resolution, which was backed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Mark Lyall Grant, the British ambassador to the UN, speaking on behalf of his country, France and Germany, condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank. "They are illegal under international law," he said.
He added that the European Union's three biggest nations hope that an independent state of Palestine will join the UN as a new member state by September 2011.
The veto by the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, is certain to anger Arab countries and Palestinian supporters around the world.
An abstention would have angered the Israelis, the closest ally of Washington in the region, as well as Democratic and Republican supporters of Israel in the US Congress.
The UN says it opposes settlements in principal, but says that the UN Security Council is not the appropriate venue for resolving the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, told council members that the veto "should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity".
Palestinians said the veto is counter productive to the peace process and will help Israel maintain illegal buildings.
"The American veto does not serve the peace process and encourages Israel to continue settlements, and to escape the
obligations of the peace process," said Nabil Abu Rdainah, a close aide to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
Earlier, the Obama administration had tried to exert pressure on the Palestinian Authority to drop the UN resolution in exchange for other measures, but this was rejected by the authoirty.
Since 2000, 14 Security Council resolutions have been vetoed by one or more of the five permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US. Of those, 10 were US vetoes, nine of them related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
