By Patrick Worsnip UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Washington's U.N. envoy denied on Tuesday he had failed to consult the State Department before putting a Middle East resolution to the U.N. Security Council that he later withdrew after Israel objected. The United States pulled the draft, which hailed the results of a Nov. 27 Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, last Friday in what the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers called an embarrassing about-face. Saying the United States was "not a banana republic," Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad dismissed what he said were media reports he had submitted the draft resolution "on my own." "With all due respect, there is nothing with those reports," he told journalists. "I talked to the secretary of state (Condoleezza Rice) a few hours before I came to the council. We were very well coordinated with people in Washington," he said. "I don't know whether the secretary of state had seen the text but I had talked with her and I'm sure she was fully briefed. The same applied to my colleagues," Khalilzad said. "We don't just write a text in the mission and come and present it to people. We are an organized government, institutionalized. We are not a banana republic." Israeli officials said at the time that while they had no objections to the U.S. text in itself, they believed a Security Council resolution was not appropriate. Khalilzad said while the draft was welcomed by members of the Security Council, who include Arab Qatar, when it was submitted last Thursday, "the Israeli government at the highest level decided this was not going to be useful." "There was a concern that some had whether if a draft resolution was introduced, other things would be brought in by interested members of the council that would make it more complicated than a simple welcoming and endorsing of what had happened," he said. Washington had simply wanted to encourage and support the Israelis and Palestinians with its resolution, but Israel had been concerned about "the record of the United Nations with regard to the issue of Israel-Palestinian issues," he added. Israel and its U.S. ally have often charged that there is anti-Israeli bias in the world body, and analysts said the Jewish state wanted to keep U.N. involvement in the Middle East peace process to a minimum. Khalilzad said his mission had consulted the Israelis and Palestinians about the draft but he did not say exactly when. Israeli and Palestinian officials indicated at the time they did not have advance knowledge of it. (Editing by John O'Callaghan)
