Israel had described the resolution calling for a halt to the Gaza fighting as unworkable because it did not guarantee Israel’s security, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was key in persuading the United States, a close ally, to abstain.

The resolution, passed Thursday in a 14-0 vote, "calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza."

"I said: ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,"’ Olmert said Monday in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. "They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now.’ He got off the podium and spoke to me."

Olmert said he told Bush that the United States should not vote in favor, and the U.S. president then called Rice and told her not to do so.