UN Names Jenin Inquiry Team (BBC)

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BBC - 22 April 2002

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1944000/1944434.stm


UN names Jenin inquiry team

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has appointed Finland's former
President Martti Ahtisaari head of a team to probe events at the
refugee camp in Palestinians say hundreds of civilians died, but
Israel insists the number of dead was fewer than 100, and that most
of them were gunmen.

Criticism of Israel has also come the from the Red Cross and the UN
relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) which on Monday
accused it of violating international humanitarian laws during its
operation in the Jenin camp.

The UN commission also includes Sadako Ogata of Japan, former head of
the UN refugee agency, and Cornelio Sammaruga, the Swiss former head
of the International Red Cross.

Retired US General William Nash, a former UN regional administrator
in Kosovo, will be military adviser to the team, and Peter Fitzgerald
of Ireland, a former UN civilian police officer, will be police
adviser.

Conditions imposed

Mr Annan said: "The team will start its work without delay. It will
first assemble in Europe this week and then travel to the region as
soon as possible.

"I expect the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to
co-operate fully with the team and to provide full and complete
access to all sides, sources of information and individuals that the
team will consider necessary."

An Israeli official told the news agency AFP that they were surprised
not to have been consulted over the appointments.

"We would have preferred the team to be made up of military
specialists qualified to assess the complexity of a battle in a
populated area," the official said.

  Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior aide to Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat, welcomed the appointments and told AFP they would give the
team all the assistance it needed.

The decision to send a commission was agreed by the UN Security
Council on Friday.

The US agreed to it on the condition that the team would report to Mr
Annan and not to the Security Council, which Israel regards as biased
against it.

There was controversy between Israel and New York over who should sit
on the commission.

Israel said it had nothing to hide in Jenin, but had warned it would
not accept a commission which included UN regional co-ordinator Terje
Roed-Larsen, UNRWA head Peter Hansen or the UN's human rights chief
Mary Robinson.

Israel accuses the three officials of pro-Palestinian bias.

'War crimes' inquiry

Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, is calling for
full international war crimes inquiry, following its three-day survey
of Jenin camp.

Hospital officials say that fewer than 50 bodies have been recovered,
but the Palestinians say hundreds of people have been killed and may
be buried under houses bulldozed by the Israeli army.

Israel says 23 of its soldiers were killed in the refugee camp,
including 13 in a single ambush, as its troops rooted out Palestinian
militants. "The claim that only fighters were killed is simply not
true - a mixture of bodies were clearly civilians and combatants,"
said Derrick Pounder, forensics expert from Dundee University in
Scotland.

Mr Pounder said he had examined five of 21 bodies, including three
women, which were uncovered during his three days in Jenin.

He said at least two bodies appeared to be Palestinian fighters, but
of the other three, one 52-year-old man was wearing sandals and
appeared to be a civilian, as did another 38-year-old man dressed in
ordinary clothing

"What was striking was what was absent. It was inconceivable that
there were not large numbers of seriously injured," he said,
concluding that they must have been left to bleed to death.

"There must be many more (dead) because we could smell the corpses,"
Mr Pounder said.
 
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