Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas holds up a copy of the application he submitted to U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon for U.N membership, at U.N. headquarters in New York City on September 23, 2011 (UN Photo by Marco Castro)

(CNSNews.com) – Undeterred by last year’s failure, Palestinian leaders plan to push ahead with their bid for U.N. recognition in 2012, but the U.S. government believes that its chances are, if anything, reduced by the new makeup of the U.N. Security Council.

“We are roughly in the same place now as we were last year – and potentially in a better position,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice told an audience in New York Monday, in response to a question about the new Security Council (UNSC) and the likelihood of a renewed Palestinian push.

Rice said it was unclear what plans the Palestinians have in the weeks and months ahead, but if it was weighing its chances in the UNSC, it would “be doing so in a very similar landscape” to last year’s.

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas submitted the application last September, but a Security Council committee said after consideration that its members were too divided for it to make a unanimous recommendation to the council.

Abbas could still have pushed for a vote, but chose not to after the bid appeared unable to secure the support of nine of the 15 members of the Security Council, the necessary requirement for a UNSC resolution to pass.

Instead, the PLO pursued an application to join the U.N.’s cultural agency UNESCO, which in late October became the first U.N. agency to grant “Palestine” full membership. As a result, UNESCO lost U.S. government funding under a law enacted in the 1990s denying funding to any U.N. body “which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.”

Five of the Security Council’s 10 non-permanent members leave each year. On January 1, newcomers Pakistan, Morocco, Togo, Guatemala, and Azerbaijan replaced Lebanon, Nigeria, Gabon, Brazil and Bosnia.

Pakistan, Morocco and Azerbaijan – all members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – are thought to support the Palestinian application. Guatemala, a country strongly aligned with the U.S. and one of the few Latin American countries that has not recognized “Palestine” bilaterally, would probably not.

Togo, though also an OIC member, has indicated it will oppose the PLO bid, according to a U.S. official who accompanied Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this month on a first-ever visit by a secretary of state to the small West African nation.

Of the countries no longer on the council, by contrast, Brazil, Lebanon, Gabon and probably Nigeria were thought to have been prepared to vote “yes” for the PLO application, had it actually come up for a vote, while Bosnia was expected to abstain – hence Rice’s guarded reference to opponents of the Palestinian bid being “potentially in a better position” this year.

(Of the other, unchanged, non-permanent council members, India and South Africa are supportive of the P.A. application while Germany, Colombia and Portugal are expected to vote against it or abstain. Of the veto-wielding permanent five, Russia and China were “yes” votes.)

Although the U.S. indicated its intention to use its veto if required to kill the measure anyway, winning the nine required votes would have been seen as a major achievement for the PLO and its supporters. The U.S., meanwhile, would have been portrayed as internationally isolated.

In her address to the American Jewish Committee’s national board of governors, Rice reiterated the administration’s position that “the achievement of an independent Palestinian state can only come through direct negotiations and a negotiated two-state solution.”

“We very much want to see that day come, and we very much want to see the outcome of that two-state solution realized,” she said. “But it’s not going to happen through a shortcut at the United Nations.”

Rice said she assumed Palestinian leaders had decided it was not time to push for a vote last fall because of the expected outcome.

“Nobody knows for sure what the Palestinians will choose to do, if anything, in the coming weeks or months. I think that predictions are dangerous. But let me just say that we are roughly in the same place now as we were last year – and potentially in a better position,” she said.

“So I don’t want to make any rock solid commitments on that, but I think that if the Palestinians are weighing their choices with respect to the Security Council, they’ll be doing so in a very similar landscape.”

Abbas earlier this month told a meeting of his Fatah faction of the PLO that he plans to press ahead with the U.N. bid, notwithstanding recently-launched, low-level Palestinian-Israel talks hosted by Jordan. Other PLO officials confirmed the move would take place this year.

A Republican-initiated bill before the U.S. Congress, aimed at promoting U.N. reform, contains a provision that reinforces current law by cutting off funding to any U.N. entity that grants membership, or any other upgraded status, to the PLO.

Proponents of tying U.S. funding to the U.N.’s stance on the PLO application were buoyed by the Palestinian reaction last November to the severing of funding to UNESCO.

Just hours after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced concern about the financial implications of admitting “Palestine,” PLO leaders said they were dropping a previously-announced plan to follow their successful UNESCO bid with applications to join a string of other U.N. agencies.