UN Security Council patience for Gaza truce talks running out, says Slovenia

Patience is running out among United Nations Security Council members and the 15-member body will likely consider taking action if a ceasefire cannot soon be brokered between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Slovenia's U.N. envoy - council president for September - said on Tuesday.

"There is a raising anxiousness in the council that it has to move one way or the other - either there is a ceasefire or that the council then reflects on what else we can do to bring the ceasefire," said Slovenia's U.N. Ambassador Samuel Zbogar.

"I'm pretty sure that in September it will have to go ... one way or the other, not because we want (it to), but because I think the patience is out," he told reporters.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday questioned how the warring parties in Gaza could agree to pauses in fighting to allow the vaccination of some 640,000 Palestinian children against polio but not a ceasefire.

"If the parties can act to protect children from a deadly virus ... surely they can and must act to protect children and all innocents from the horrors of war," said his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

The Security Council in June adopted resolution 2735, which backed a three-phase plan, laid out by U.S. President Joe Biden, for a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas. But mediation efforts - led by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar - have yet to produce a deal between Israel and Hamas.

'Be quiet'

Biden said on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal.

When asked what action the council could take if the June resolution was not soon implemented, Zbogar said: "There are many tools that council has at (its) disposal."

"But to start, I think one would be to establish that we have to move on from (resolution) 2735 because for the past three months the council was waiting implementation of that resolution," he said.

Russia and the United States last week clashed at the end of a Security Council meeting on Gaza over efforts to end the war.

Russia's deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy asked deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood to explain any modifications that Washington had proposed to the ceasefire plan that would accommodate its ally Israel.

"We have already repeatedly been demanding that we receive this information because resolution 2735 has concrete parameters in it and we cannot step beyond those parameters," Polyanskiy said. Russia abstained from the vote to adopt that resolution.

Wood responded: "Implementation is the issue here. The framework is there."

He added: "My recommendation to you and your government would be: If you're going to contribute something positively, then contribute it, if not, then you should be quiet."