UNITED NATIONS — The American ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, yesterday questioned the “utility” of a monthly U.N. Security Council Middle East briefing, which some see as a forum for Israel’s U.N. critics to air their grievances.

At one such session yesterday, China denounced the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Syria railed against targeted killings, Sudan spoke of “crimes against humanity,” and Cuba noted human rights violations. But because the topic of the day was “the Middle East, Including the Palestinian Question,” Tibet, Lebanon, Darfur, and Havana were not up for discussion.

In his capacity as this month’s council president, Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations and a veteran of such briefings, asked his Israeli counterpart, Dan Gillerman, not to make use of his “right of reply” at the end of the session. Mr. Gillerman did take the floor, however, and expressed his country’s “gratitude to the assassins of Damascus and the butchers of Sudan, both beacons of human rights, for their expert presentations on terror and genocide.”

As America leads an international effort to negotiate a future Palestinian Arab state, the monthly briefing exacerbates the enmity on both sides, Mr. Khalilzad said. Diplomats use it “for posturing, for finger pointing, for further polarizing, for scoring points,” he said. If the briefings are not useful, he added, “we question the utility of these meetings.”

The meetings, which traditionally begin with a briefing by a representative of the secretary-general, were launched in 2002 as an initiative by Syria, then the Arab representative on the council. The Arab states sought deeper council involvement in the region’s affairs and called repeatedly for the condemnation of Israel, despite a Palestinian Arab suicide bombing campaign in Israeli cities.

After vetoing several one-sided resolutions, the American U.N. ambassador at the time, John Negroponte, created rules for the passage of any Palestinian Arab-Israeli council resolution. Under the “Negroponte Doctrine,” the council should condemn certain Arab terrorist groups and call for their dissolution. It was agreed that holding a nonbinding monthly briefing would be easier than abiding by Mr. Negroponte’s rules.

With the arrival of the sharp-tongued Mr. Gillerman, in early 2003, Israel took a more aggressive stance at the briefing. “We don’t want to leave accusations against us unanswered,” an Israeli diplomat who requested anonymity said yesterday. The diplomat added that by making the briefing tit-for-tat, Israel also can demonstrate the futility of such long debates.

These “discussions have not helped one Palestinian or Israeli child,” Mr. Gillerman told The New York Sun. “They serve merely to let off steam. We need to rethink them.”

But the Palestinian Arab U.N. observer, Riyad Mansour, said the council’s role is to help end “the tragedy of our people.” If the council “is not shouldering its responsibility in a concrete way, then we are only left with something that might not be 100% perfect, of at least airing our views.” Separately, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, called on the Swiss government yesterday to rescind its nomination of an “anti-Semitic apologist for dictators,” Jean Ziegler, as adviser to the U.N. Human Rights Council. The director of the Geneva-based U.N. Watch, Hillel Neuer, called for an investigation into the record of Mr. Ziegler, who he said is a supporter of Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro and a “co-founder of the Gadhafi Prize for Human Rights.”