By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Arab nations urged the U.N. General Assembly on Friday to adopt a resolution deploring a deadly Israeli artillery attack in Gaza after the United States vetoed a similar measure in the Security Council. Saturday's veto by Washington, Israel's closest ally, sent a message to the Jewish state "that it can continue to commit crimes and acts of outright aggression with impunity," Palestinian U.N. Observer Riyad Mansour told the assembly. But U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the new Arab draft, like the one before the Security Council, was a "one-sided, unbalanced" text that raised questions about the world body's ability to confront global problems. "We believe that the United Nations is ill-served when its members seek to transform the organization into a forum that is little more than a self-serving and polemical attack against Israel or the United States," he said. While action in the 192-nation assembly would be largely symbolic, expressing the will of world governments, Washington does not have veto power in the assembly. The Nov. 8 shelling of Beit Hanoun killed 19 civilians, including seven children and five women, Mansour said. Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman acknowledged the attack had been "a tragic accident ... which Israel deeply regrets." But he said continuing Palestinian rocket fire and the Palestinians' elected Hamas government, which refuses to acknowledge Israel or renounce violence, were to blame for the continuing Israeli military action in Gaza. Governments would become "accomplices to terror" by voting for the draft text, he said. "The blood of poor innocents will be on your hands." Gillerman also accused Qatar, the sole Arab member of the Security Council, of pressing for a quick vote last Saturday because it had learned of a major guerrilla attack in the works and feared it might embarrass Arab states if it occurred before a council vote. "We know from the Qatari (U.N.) Mission that a very large terrorist attack was being planned," Gillerman said, adding that word had not come to it directly from the mission. Qatari Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser flatly denied Gillerman's accusation. "That is not correct," he told Reuters. "We don't know anything about that." Al-Nasser predicted the assembly would easily approve the resolution later on Friday but Arab diplomats were still negotiating changes in the text aimed at winning broader support, particularly from European democracies.
