James Baker: ‘Appropriate’ for US to abstain from vote on Israeli settlements

Former Secretary of State James Baker said Sunday that he thinks the United States made the right decision by abstaining from the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

“And as a matter of fact, it was former Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel who said Israel needs to make the tough decisions if it wants to avoid becoming an apartheid state,” Baker told CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”  “And so that’s why I think it was appropriate in this instance for the United States to abstain.”

The U.N. Security Council voted 14-0 last month on a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The United States abstained from the vote, refusing to exercise its veto power. 

{mosads}Baker, who served as an adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said a two state-solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only solution.

“If we’re talking about abandoning the two-state solution and leaving it, that’s going to create serious problems for the United States, not just with respect to the Arab-Israeli dispute, but it’s going to create serious problems for us more generally in the region as a whole,” he said.