Palestinian negotiators are bringing their efforts to be recognised as a state to the United Nations general assembly, which is meeting in New York this week. Efforts to avoid a diplomatic crisis have been building, with last-minute talks continuing today.

The Palestinians intend to lodge a formal application to be admitted to the UN as an independent state based on the borders of 4 June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, this week.

The US, the European Union and Israel are desperately trying to avoid a vote at the Security Council, but the Palestinians are determined to press ahead. The Palestinian president, Mahmood Abbas, said in television address last week that he would not bow to foreign pressure and what he called attempts to "buy off" the Palestinians.

Repercussions from the collision course could be far-reaching.

Some Arab and European nations are pressuring the Palestinians to downgrade the request for statehood by putting it instead to the wider general assembly, which can only offer observer status to the Palestinians. This would save the US the embarrassment of having to veto the proposal at the Security Council.

We will be covering the events at the UN in a rolling blog from today and throughout this week. Our correspondent Chris McGreal arrived at the UN this morning and will be filing from there today. He will be joined by Ed Pilkington later in the week. Our Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood is monitoring events from that city; and our diplomatic editor Julian Borger will provide analysis from London.

My colleague Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem has filed this guide to what we are expecting this week.

HS: So, finally, "September" is here. It's not just the name of the month, but shorthand in Israel, the Palestinian territories and global diplomatic circles for the climax of the Palestinian leadership's plan to demand recognition of their state by the United Nations.

Six decades after the UN recognised the state of Israel, and in the 45th year of living under occupation, the Palestinians will this week – barring a last-minute diplomatic deal – formally request that the United Nations admit the independent state of Palestine as its 194th member.

Israel and the United States are vehemently opposed to the move. They say only a negotiated agreement can end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. True, say the Palestinians, but the past 20 years of negotiations have got us nowhere. Now it's time the international community recognised our right to self-determination and to a state alongside Israel.

On Friday, after delivering a speech the UN general assembly, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (left) says he will submit a formal application of membership of the UN - which must have the approval of the security council before it can be enacted.

President Obama has said he will veto the plan, despite the risk of further damaging the US's standing in the Arab world. Another possibility is that the security council could set up a committee to examine the merits of the application, kicking it into the long grass for weeks or even months.

Plan B, if the move is swiftly vetoed, is for the Palestinians to seek the backing of the general assembly for a status short of full membership but an advance on their current "observer" status. "Non-member state" status would give them recourse to institutions such as the International Criminal Court.

The Palestinians say they have the required two-thirds of the UN's 193 states that they need for Plan B to succeed – although neither side is letting up on the heavy lobbying. There's no veto in the general assembly.

But frantic closed-door diplomatic efforts to find a way of avoiding the UN car crash will continue until the moment Abbas gets to his feet. The US and the EU are desperately trying to persuade both sides back to the negotiating table. And no one is predicting where this week's diplomatic roller-coaster will end.

This week's general assembly meeting is not just about the Palestinians' bid for statehood. There are many other issues being discussed. One important one is health, and my colleague, Guardian health editor Sarah Boseley, has this.

SB: Today and tomorrow the UN general assembly is hosting only its second-ever high-level meeting on health, bringing together world leaders to focus on tackling today's leading causes of death – cancer, heart and lung diseases and diabetes. These so-called "non-communicable diseases" or NCDs (a terrible name which surely appeals only to the anoraks) are all being worsened by our modern sedentary lifestyle, staring at computer screens and TVs, taking little exercise, eating junk food high in salt, fats and sugars and smoking and drinking alcohol.

This used to be thought the scourge of the rich world, and it is, but it is now the growing curse of developing nations too. And because there are few health warnings around diet and exercise in poor countries and very little in the way of treatment for cancer, heart disease and the rest, the death toll in the developing world is rising fast.

The first UN high-level meeting in 2001 galvanised world leaders against Aids. The public health community hope this one will do the same thing for the NCDs. An avalanche of reports has begun and is still moving, noting the scale of damage wrought by these diseases and the present and future costs of dealing with them. In 2008, about 36m of the 57m global deaths were thought to be attributable to NCDs. Quite a lot are preventable, for instances with efforts to cut smoking in the developing world.

A draft declaration, to be signed by government leaders on Tuesday, will signpost all the measures to increase healthy behaviour that the developed nations already know about – even though so many people take so little heed – but that are not yet much discussed in poor countries.

So governments will be urged to warn the public of the dangers of high fat, salt and high sugar food and drinks and restrict advertising of them to children. A big concern is that the declaration does not set global targets. Many wanted endorsement of the World Health Organisation suggestion of a 25% cut in deaths by 2025. Without goals, it is hard to hold people accountable.

Others say that public health warnings are not enough - to tackle these and other diseases, poor countries need more healthworkers, clean cookstoves (Hillary Clinton is a big supporter of this cause) and better drugs. These are nodded to in the main declaration but will receive more attention in the many side-meetings going on around the city.

More from Sarah Boseley on the health talks today.

SB: The UN has now signed what it is billing as a "historic commitment" to fight cancer, heart and lung diseases and diabetes. Some people admire the determined wording about the scale of the problem but deplore the absence of targets from the declaration that has now been signed.

My sources say the problem was the World Health Organisation came out with targets – a 25% reduction in deaths by 2025 – a bit too late to get the preliminary work done before the UN summit. If you like, the public health experts who had been pressing for something to be done for years were taken by surprise when the unprecedented meeting was actually called.

The declaration now puts the ball back in the WHO court. It is expected to work out some "indicators" by which progress in tackling these diseases can be measured. Below is the WHO statement in response.

The Palestinians have confirmed hey will submit an application for full UN membership on Friday, according to the Associated Press. This is first step in a process to a declaration of statehood.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas informed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon of his plans on Monday, as behind-the-scenes efforts by mediators intensified to try to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

Any candidate for UN membership must submit a letter to the secretary-general stating it is a "peace-loving" state and accepts the UN charter. Ban is expected to examine the letter and then send it to the security council which must give its approval before an assembly vote.

The US has said it will use its veto on the security council to block the move. Abbas said earlier today that he would not be deterred from seeking UN recognition for a Palestinian despite what he described as "tremendous pressure."

Chris McGreal, who's at the United Nations in New York says the Europeans are now leading the charge to pressure the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to abandon his bid for statehood at the UN security council.

CM: Even France, which has proven more sympathetic to the Palestinian position that many other European nations, now wants to avoid a showdown in the security council where the US has said it will veto the Palestinian move. The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said that he planned to tell Abbas a meeting later on Monday that going to the security council will be a political error.

"I will ask him what is his strategy? Going to the security council and what after that?" he said. "We have to avoid such a confrontation. We have to find a balanced solution... The only solution is to resume talks."

But Juppé also said that "The relaunch of the peace process is needed" and the international community has "three or four days" to reach a deal to head off the request to the security council.

He warned that the status quo of the Israeli occupation is "neither acceptable nor tenable" and that lack of progress toward a solution will lead to another "explosion of violence".

Diplomats said a number of proposals are under discussion to get peace talks going again but with assurances progress will be made. One idea under discussion would be for Abbas to submit his request to the UN secretary general who would sit on it so long as peace talks were progressing or until a deadline for their completion was reached. If the talks failed, the request would be revived.

So far Abbas is not bowing to the pressure following his defiant speech last week in which he said the Palestinians had been forced in to the move at the UN because of Israeli intransigence and that he would not be "bought off". On Monday he said he will press ahead with the request to the security council on but that he recognised that the diplomatic showdown with the US, and Israeli threats of retaliation, could create "very difficult times" for the Palestinian people.

"We have only one choice: going to the Security Council," said Abbas in New York. "We decided to take this step and all hell has broken out against us."

Abbas met the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, whose spokesman said the Palestinian leader had reiterated his commitment to a two state solution.

Barack Obama's administration is no longer seen as an "honest broker" between the two sides, and as such has been increasingly isolated. As Chris McGreal pointed out in the previous post, the Europeans have taken the lead.

Still, the US has pressed ahead with talks today. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, met her Turkish counterpart, urging the country not to allow its rift with Israel to deepen.

AP uqoted a senior US official said Clinton had encouraged Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu play a positive role in resolving the Palestinian issue . A second senior US official added that Washington was particularly concerned about frayed Turkey-Israel ties.

Officials said they would like the Turks, who support the Palestinian bid, to lower tensions with Israel by toning down what has been sharp rhetori c in recent weeks.

Barack Obama arrives in New York tonght, without a clear plan to persuade the Palestinians to drop their bid. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to arrive on Wednesday, when the UN gathering formally opens.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has issued a short statement in advance of his arrival in New York tomorrow. He called on Mahmood Abbas to join him in face-to-face talks at the UN. "I call on the PA chair to open direct negotiations in New York, that will continue in Jerusalem and Ramallah," he said.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has been speaking to reporters in New York this afternoon and joined Netanyahu in calling for new talks. She repeated the US position that the only path to a separate state for Palestinians is through negotiations with Israel.

Chris McGreal has filed his story on today's diplomatic wranglings, which continue into the night. Here's a key extract:

The Middle East Quartet of the EU, UN, US and Russia were to meet Monday evening in an attempt to construct a formula to restart peace talks and stave off a showdown in the security council. Diplomats say the key is to make the proposal strong enough, in part by stating clearly that negotiations will be on the basis of 1967 borders with some swaps of territories, so that Abbas can claim a significant step toward ending the occupation. But the Palestinians remain deeply sceptical after 20 years of negotiations failing to win their independence.

We are wrapping up this live blog now. Coverage will continue tomorrow.