Outcry over Jenin Massacres Overwhelms Bush Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Bush Overwhelmed by International Revulsion at Jenin Massacres: a day after calling the Butcher of Beiut a "man of peace," he now calls for UN, Red Cross investigations UN Security Council to Launch Inquiry * The Guardian - April 20, 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,687669,00.html> Bush says Israeli invasion of Jenin must be investigated Julian Borger in Washington, Chris McGreal in Jenin and Ewen MacAskill in Jerusalem The White House called yesterday for an international inquiry into civilian casualties caused by the Israeli military assault on Jenin, and asked the Israeli government to allow UN and Red Cross investigators into the devastated West Bank town. As the Israeli army pulled out the last of its troops, President George Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said: "The president has called for the United Nations and the Red Cross to be permitted to have unhindered access to Jenin. The president believes what's important is transparency so all the facts can be developed." Mr Fleischer suggested it might be in the interests of Ariel Sharon's government to allow the investigation, quoting the US assistant secretary of state, Richard Armitage, as saying: "There is a mythology sometimes to these events where numbers are bandied about." "What's important is to find the facts, and that's why the president has said that it's important to allow the UN and the Red Cross in to find out," he said. The Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, last night invited UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to launch a fact- finding mission. Mr Peres telephoned Mr Annan and said that, "should the secretary-general send someone to look into the facts of what happened in Jenin and elsewhere, it would be welcome," a UN spokesman said. Tony Blair joined leaders across Europe in backing the call for an international inquiry by the Red Cross. Mr Blair, intent on presenting himself as scrupulously even-handed, said: "Yes, what is happening in Jenin is appalling and tragic. So is large numbers of totally innocent Israeli citizens being blown up in cafes, restaurants and even during religious services." He urged a new Middle East peace initiative, with EU involvement. A day after President Bush dubbed Mr Sharon "a man of peace", Mr Fleischer said Israel was "honouring" the timetable it had provided the president for its proposed withdrawal from West Bank towns. Yesterday the Israeli army confirmed it had pulled out of Jenin but declared it a closed military area and began cutting access by blocking roads. As the soldiers withdrew, 35 Palestinians killed in two weeks of the worst fighting since Israel launched its raids into West Bank towns were buried in common graves. It was not known if the dead men were fighters or civilians. Palestinian residents say many hundreds more who died remain under the rubble of buildings crushed by Israeli bulldozers. So far, 39 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers are confirmed killed. In Gaza, which has been relatively quiet for the past few weeks, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up yesterday at an Israeli military checkpoint. Two soldiers were slightly injured. Elsewhere in Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli army shot dead seven Palestinians, including two boys, nine and 14, during a curfew, and two gunmen said by Israel to have been trying to infiltrate a Jewish settlement. * Reuters - Fri Apr 19,10:40 PM ET (via Yahoo) UN Security Council Votes for Jenin Fact-Finding Mission By Alistair Lyon JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council voted for a U.N. fact-finding mission on Israel's devastating military assault in the Jenin refugee camp, getting the green light from Israel which said it had nothing to hide. As delegates at the United Nations voted unanimously late on Friday to send a "fact-finding team" to the West Bank city, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sought a way out of Israel's siege of his Ramallah compound by suggesting the suspected killers of an Israeli cabinet minister be tried in a Palestinian court. Israel spurned the offer. The United States drafted the U.N. resolution after initially threatening to veto an Arab-drafted measure calling for a formal U.N. investigation of the "massacres" in Jenin, the scene of the heaviest fighting in a three-week Israeli offensive launched after suicide bombings killed scores of Israelis. The final resolution avoids the word "investigation" and welcomes efforts by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to "develop accurate information regarding recent events in the Jenin refugee camp." Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had earlier told Annan he was welcome to send representatives. The resolution also expresses concern at the "dire humanitarian situation of Palestinian civilians" and a report of "an unknown number of deaths and destruction." Palestinian U.N. observer Nasser al-Kidwa said the vote was crucial. "We believe a serious war crime was committed, a serious massacre was committed, and therefore some people will have to be held responsible," he said. But Aaron Jacob, Israel's Deputy U.N. Ambassador, said: "We have nothing to hide. There was no massacre in Jenin. There was a fierce battle between Israeli troops and Palestinian terrorists." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who sent tanks to Arafat's offices when he launched the West Bank offensive on March 29, has said he will maintain the siege until the suspects are handed over. A spokesman for Sharon said the men holed up in Arafat's compound must be extradited for the October assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. GAZA VIOLENCE FLARES The army withdrew from Jenin and the camp on Friday as violence flared in the Gaza Strip, where six Palestinians, including a suicide bomber, were reported killed. Arafat's offer to have Zeevi's suspected killers put on trial, relayed by his adviser Mohammed Rashid, appeared to be an attempt to break the impasse at his headquarters and restore his freedom of movement. "The Palestinian side accepts and welcomes the call by President Bush to submit those accused of killing Zeevi to the Palestinian justice (system)," Rashid said. Bush said on Thursday that Zeevi's suspected assassins, from the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), should be brought to justice, but did not say where. The PFLP said after Zeevi's shooting in a Jerusalem hotel that it had killed him in revenge for Israel's assassination of the group's leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, in August. Rashid said the suspects had been moved to the presidential compound from a prison in Nablus in February for investigation. "That doesn't change anything," Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin said of the Palestinian offer to try them, which he said came far too late. "They have to be extradited." In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian bomber blew himself up in a car outside the Gush Khatif bloc of Jewish settlements but caused no other casualties, Israeli military sources said. It was the first suicide bombing since two that killed a total of 14 people during Secretary of State Colin Powell's abortive peace mission to the region. Powell left on Wednesday. Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops were reported to have killed five Palestinians, at least two of them gunmen. The Gaza Strip had been relatively quiet during Israel's sweeping West Bank offensive into Palestinian-ruled cities. In Egypt, a 40-year-old Israeli tourist was stabbed to death near the Sinai resort of Nuweiba, Egyptian security sources said, adding that his body had been found on Thursday night. In Ramallah, a Palestinian doctor said an Israeli sniper had killed a 14-year-old boy, just before the army lifted a curfew. Refugees buried their dead and sifted through flattened homes in the Jenin camp, which Israel calls a "nest of terror." An army statement said Israeli forces had "completed their mission in Jenin," but remained around the city. Amnesty International said there were indications of serious human rights abuses by Israel at the camp, including houses demolished with people still in them and alleged executions. BUSH WANTS FACTS Bush's spokesman said the U.S. president wants the facts to come out about the Israeli attack on the camp. The army says it did its best to avoid civilian casualties in the Jenin camp and only blew up or bulldozed houses where gunmen had set booby-traps or were refusing to surrender. Israeli troops thrust into the West Bank village of Beit Dajan, near Nablus, on Friday night, witnesses said. Israel had said troops would quit Jenin and Nablus by Sunday but stay at Arafat's compound and near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem until standoffs with militants ended. A hospital official said the Jenin camp body count had risen to 39 after the discovery of three more corpses as Palestinians buried about 35 of them in common graves just outside the camp. The official said the death toll could climb to between 200 and 400. Israel says about 70 Palestinians died, mostly fighters. Twenty-three Israeli troops were killed in Jenin. At least 1,287 Palestinians and 452 Israelis have died since a Palestinian revolt against occupation erupted 18 months ago. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytmid-04.20.02-03:15:31-17049