April 19, 2002
The Security Council decided to extend an open debate on the Middle East into Friday to give members time to consider a call by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for an armed multinational force in the Palestinian territories.
The extension, announced at the start of the debate on Thursday by council president Sergei Lavrov, Russia's ambassador to the UN, averted an immediate clash over a proposal for a UN inquiry into deaths in the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin.
Diplomats earlier quoted the US ambassador, John Negroponte, saying he would veto an Arab-sponsored draft resolution asking Annan to investigate "the full scope of the tragic events that have taken place in the Jenin refugee camp."
The draft also expressed shock at the "massacre" in Jenin, called on Israel to respect the 1949 Geneva Convention on protecting civilians in wartime, and called for "an international presence that could help provide better conditions on the ground". The Israeli army said Thursday that "dozens" of people were buried under the rubble of about 100 houses in Jenin, but denied that its troops had carried out a massacre during three weeks of bitter fighting in the camp. Palestinian leaders say at least 500 were killed in the fighting, at least half of them women and children.
The Palestinian observer to the United Nations, Nasser Al-Kidwa, the first of 41 scheduled speakers, told the council that "regardless of the number of dead, a massacre was perpetrated in Jenin." He accused Israeli forces of using human shields during the battle and said that by preventing members of the International Red Cross and other relief workers from entering the camp, they were guilty of war crimes. "We call upon you to consider and adopt the draft resolution," Al-Kidwa said.
The draft also "condemns the failure of implementation of Resolution 1402," adopted on March 30, which called for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank. Israel has insisted that the Palestinians cease fire before it complies with the council's demand for a withdrawal. But, Al-Kidwa said, "the Palestinian side will never accept any condition on the implementation of resolutions 1402 and 1403" which reiterated its terms.
"We insist on their immediate implementation," he said, adding: "We believe that this Security Council must invoke Chapter Seven of the Charter of the United Nations to enforce implementation of its resolutions." Annan earlier invoked Chapter Seven, which authorizes the use of military force, when he asked the council to send a multinational force to the occupied territories with "a robust mandate".
He said he did not envisage a UN force, but "rather a multinational force formed by a coalition of the willing" -- a group of nations allied in a military operation with council approval such as that in Kosovo. Annan later told reporters it was for those countries to decide on the size of the force and its command structure.
Annan quoted top UN officials who visited the Jenin camp for the first time in three weeks on Thursday as saying the scene there was "horrific". "They witnessed people digging out corpses from the rubble with their bare hands," he said. "The destruction is massive and the impact on the civilian population is devastating."
Asked later whether he supported the idea of an official inquiry, Annan told reporters: "We haven't initiated a formal investigation as such; for the moment, I would prefer we concentrate on getting assistance to those in need." He said "a time will come for the investigation to be undertaken," but added: "That is not my first priority; at this stage it is to get help to the people, to get the dead buried and move the wounded."
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