U.S. ready to back Gaza aid resolution

After nearly a week of intense negotiations, the United States said Thursday night it was ready to support a United Nations Security Council resolution that would call for more desperately needed aid to enter the Gaza Strip. A vote was not expected until Friday at the earliest.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told reporters the U.S. had “worked hard and diligently over the course of the past week” with the countries that had proposed the resolution, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, to ensure “we put a mechanism on the ground that will support humanitarian assistance, and we’re ready to vote for it.”

Earlier Thursday, a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the talks, said high-level negotiators from Washington and Cairo had been seeking common ground on who would inspect the aid for weapons and other contraband before it entered Gaza.

The draft text of the resolution that circulated before the ambassador spoke dropped a call for the “suspension of hostilities” from an earlier version, instead calling for “urgent steps” to allow unhindered humanitarian access and the creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

It also asked the U.N. secretary-general to appoint a coordinator responsible for “facilitating, coordinating, monitoring and verifying” that aid cargo is humanitarian in nature, who would also be “consulting all relevant parties.”

The Security Council this week has repeatedly delayed a vote on the resolution amid concerns from the U.S. that allowing the U.N. to inspect aid into Gaza would leave Israel with no role in the process, making the system unworkable. Other members, hoping to avoid a veto by the U.S., have gone back to renegotiate the parameters.