US Edition 
Palestinians to mount renewed statehood bid at UN
The Palestinian Authority has declared its intention to resurrect its statehood bid at the United Nations within a month if Israel refuses to heed its conditions for renewing peace talks.
After months of drift following his initial approach to the UN Security Council last September, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, said he was willing to risk American ire by once again placing the statehood issue in the international arena.
Mr Abbas is to send a long-promised letter to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, next week setting out Palestinian demands for resuming peace talks, which have been frozen since September, 2010.
He is to call for a total freeze of Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the release of Palestinian prisoners. He will also request an Israeli acknowledgement that a future Palestinian state should be founded on territory Israel occupied in the Six Day War of 1967, with mutually agreed land swaps to allow Israel to annex some of the larger settlements it has built on occupied land.
The letter will be delivered in person to Mr Netanyahu by senior Palestinian officials, making it the most high-profile encounter between the two sides in more than two years.
But the likelihood of it eliciting a positive Israeli response is slight.
Mr Netanyahu has persistently refused Palestinian and international calls to halt settlement construction, prompting accusations that it has broken pledges made during earlier peace talks.
Israel says it is willing to resume peace talks only if the Palestinians drop what it characterises as "preconditions".
Under intense US pressure, Mr Abbas withdrew a threat in his letter to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, a step that would force Israel to resume direct control of all the West Bank, heightening the risk of confrontation between Israeli troops and the Palestinian population.
But he told a delegation of Israeli politicians sympathetic position that he was unwilling to yield to a what he said was a request from President Barack Obama to postpone a return to the UN until after November's elections in the United States.
Mr Obama has already threatened to veto the Palestinian application, filed last September, for full membership of the UN if the matter is brought to a vote.
With that avenue blocked, Mr Abbas said he would instead turn to the UN's General Assembly, which has the power to recognise Palestine as a non-member state.
Although such a step would be largely symbolic, Israel bitterly opposes it as a unilateral step that would undermine the internationally accepted basis for a peace deal.