April 25, 2002
Secretary-General Kofi Annan is confident that the United Nations and Israel will resolve their differences over a UN mission to probe Israel's military assault on the Jenin refugee camp, a UN spokesman said. After giving the secretary-general a green-light to send a fact-finding team, saying it had "nothing to hide," Israel suddenly announced on Tuesday it would delay the team's arrival because of disagreements over its composition and mandate.
Annan agreed to Israel's request for a meeting at UN headquarters on Thursday where a delegation from Jerusalem will tell U.N. officials their concerns: Israel wants more military and counter-terrorism experts on the team and it wants the team to confine its activities to Jenin.
But the secretary-general brushed aside Israel's demand for a delay and gave the go-ahead for the three-member team and its advisers to gather in Geneva, where they held a first meeting on Wednesday. Annan said he expects the team in the Middle East by Saturday - and U.N. spokesmen in New York and Geneva said that was still the target date.
At the request of Arab nations, the UN Security Council held consultations late Wednesday to discuss a draft resolution requesting Israel's full cooperation with the fact-finding commission and demanding an end to the Israeli military sieges of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah. No action was taken on the document, and diplomats said discussion would resume late Thursday.
Asked repeatedly whether Israel would block the team from entering Jenin, Alan Baker, a Foreign Ministry official on the Israeli team traveling to New York, said: "I really can't say. The prime minister and the foreign minister will meet to discuss this and give me instructions. Hopefully, we won't have to deal with this question." Similarly, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard deflected a question on what would happen if Israel decides not to cooperate with the team.
"We're confident that this team is going to go and that we're going to be able to resolve our differences if they are differences with Israel," he said. "Getting the Israelis and Palestinians to agree on anything is not easy but we would like them both to agree that this is going to be a fair and impartial study," Eckhard stressed. The Palestinians accuse the Israeli army of a massacre of civilians during eight days of fierce fighting in the Jenin camp.
Israel says its army fought intense gunbattles with Palestinian gunmen, who were the main victims. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by phone Tuesday night and also to Annan, trying to clear the way for a fact-finding commission. "Clearly, innocent lives may well have been lost," Powell testified Wednesday before the U.S. Congress. But, he said, "I have no evidence of mass graves. I see no evidence that would support a massacre took place."
Annan refused a request by Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Lancry to change the three-member team he named Monday. Its leader is former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and the other members are Cornelio Sommaruga, a former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Sadako Ogata, the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
A Western diplomat said Israel wanted Sommaruga removed.
Israel's problems with the Red Cross - which Sommaruga headed from 1987 until 1999 - have continued since Israel was first rejected for membership in 1949. The ICRC recognizes only the Red Cross and the Muslim Crescent as official emblems and will not sanction the Jewish Star of David as a symbol for relief workers.
Israel also has had a difficult relationship with the United Nations, which once had a resolution on the books equating Zionism with racism. Relations have improved under Annan but were strained again last year after the U.N. admitted it misled Israel about potential evidence in the kidnapping of Israeli troops in south Lebanon.
Recent remarks made by Annan's envoy to the Mideast over the Jenin operation infuriated the Israeli government. Annan did not rule out adding additional experts if necessary. On Monday, he named retired U.S. Maj Gen. William Nash as military adviser and Irish assistant police commissioner Peter Fitzgerald as police adviser.
Eckhard announced the appointment of a legal adviser, Tyge Lehmann, who is the Danish government's senior legal adviser and ambassador for human rights, and a medical adviser, Helena Ranta from the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
At Nash's request, Eckhard said, the secretary-general agreed to add another military expert to the team. Baker said that, at Israel's request, Annan also agreed to put Nash "more or less equal" to the three-member team.
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