NEW YORK - Agencies - South Africa on Tuesday condemned Israeli settlement activities as "acts of aggression" at a UN Security Council briefing in New York.

South Africa's Deputy Minister of International Relations Ebrahim Ebrahim told the council that Israel's ongoing expansion of illegal Jewish-only settlements made the two-state solution "a distant, if not a pipe dream."

Ebrahim, who is January's president of the Security Council, recalled South Africa's struggle to end Apartheid and said the country was certain Palestine would succeed in its own struggle for statehood.