UNITED NATIONS -- The UN Security Council struggled into the wee hours Tuesday to satisfy both the United States and Arab countries in a resolution demanding an end to the Israeli siege of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters.

Diplomats mulled a European compromise reconciling Arab criticism of Israeli military actions with U.S. insistence that the council also condemn Palestinian suicide bombings and recall the need to combat terrorism.

The council met for about seven hours Monday to hear a total of 44 speakers in an open session, AFP reported.

The meeting was called at the request of Arab members of the United Nations after Israel stormed Arafat's compound late Thursday in retaliation for two suicide bombings that killed seven Israelis.

c was meeting, the compound remained under siege and Israeli tanks and helicopters killed nine Palestinians in a raid into Gaza City, Palestinian hospital sources said.

The Palestinian representative to the UN, Nasser al-Kidwa, asked the council to adopt "a clear resolution" demanding an immediate end to the siege in Ramallah, on the West Bank.

But the U.S. Ambassador, John Negroponte, said the council must also condemn suicide attacks.

"We will not support the adoption of a one-sided text that fails to recognize that this conflict has two sides" he said.

One of his aides told reporters during a break in deliberations that the United States would use its permanent member's veto to defeat the Arab draft if it came to a vote.

But Arab diplomats rejected an alternative U.S. draft which condemned two suicide bombings that took place in Israel on Wednesday and Thursday.

The U.S. text declared that the groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, came under Security Council Resolution 1373, passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Resolution 1373, backed by the threat of sanctions or military force, imposed sweeping obligations on all governments to deny financing, support and safe harbor for terrorists.

The U.S. draft also recalled the 1997 international convention for the suppression of terrorist bombings.

These two paragraphs were dropped from the European proposals, drafted by France and Norway. But the compromise draft retained U.S. language calling on the Palestinian authority "to implement its expressed commitment to ensure that those responsible for terrorist acts are brought to justice."

While condemning the suicide attacks in Israel, it also condemned the terrorist bombing of a Palestinian school in Hebron which preceeded them.

Several children were injured in that blast.

The European text concluded by expressing the council's "full support for the efforts of the quartet" -- the United Nations, the united States, Russia and the European Union.

One U.S. official told AFP reporters that his delegation's pro-Israeli stand would not damage efforts to build a consensus for a tough new resolution on Iraq.

"Our colleagues on the council understand that these are two different issues," he said.

He even asserted that the day-long council debate -- which was postponed from Friday, the day Kidwa requested it -- had not upset the work of diplomats drafting the Iraqi resolution.

"We've got people working on both accounts," he said.

But a meeting which the five permanent members of the council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- had planned to hold was put off, and the U.S. official admitted that he knew of nothing scheduled for Tuesday.