|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
May 13th,
2009 - UN Council Voices “Concern” about Gaza War Report |
|
UN Council Voices “Concern”
about Gaza War Report By
Louis Charbonneau Reuters May
13, 2009 United Nations, May 13 -
Members of the Security Council voiced "concern" on Wednesday about
a U.N. inquiry that accused Israel of negligence and recklessness when it
struck U.N. facilities during its January attacks on the Gaza Strip. U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon, who appointed the four-person inquiry board in February, said last
week he would seek compensation for damage put at more than $11 million but
would not follow the panel's call for further investigations. "The members of the
council expressed their concern about the findings of the report,"
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the Security Council,
told reporters. The 15 council members were
not demanding any follow-up action from Ban, though Churkin said they had
"expressed a general interest to be kept abreast of the progress of the
matter as the secretary-general deems appropriate." Libya, an arch foe of Israel
and the only Arab nation on the Security Council, has drafted a resolution in
which the council would condemn Israel's war against Hamas militants in the
Gaza Strip. But Churkin said it appeared Libya had decided not to put the
draft text to a vote. Diplomats said the draft had
no chance of passing, since the United States, Britain and France - all
veto-wielding permanent council members - would have struck it down. Instead, the Western powers
agreed to back a non-binding expression of the council's "concern,"
they said. Israeli officials rejected
the U.N. report on Gaza as one-sided, saying it ignored the fact that Israel
was fighting a war against a "terrorist" organization - Hamas. Israel's armed forces
conducted their own investigation into the conduct of the December-January
Gaza campaign and said last month it had found no serious misconduct by
Israeli troops, who had acted within international law. “Gross Negligence” Israel launched the campaign
to try to halt Palestinian rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled strip. More
than 1,000 Palestinians were killed but the sides differ over how many were
combatants. Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians. The U.N. inquiry led by
Briton Ian Martin, a former head of rights group Amnesty International who
later joined the United Nations, investigated nine incidents of damage to
U.N. property and faulted Israel in seven of them. It blamed Hamas in one
case and could not establish responsibility in another. In several cases, the report
found Israel had "breached the inviolability of United Nations
premises," had not respected U.N. immunity and was responsible for
deaths and injuries. In a Jan. 15 incident, the
shelling of the Gaza compound of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
with high explosive and white phosphorus, an incendiary substance, "was
grossly negligent, amounting to recklessness," it said. Three people
were injured. Israel has said that the
damage to U.N. premises was caused unintentionally when Israeli troops
responded to Palestinian fire. The U.N. report said, however, that Israel had
falsely asserted that the fire had come from within U.N. facilities. Editing by Catherine Bremer. © Thomson Reuters 2009. All
rights reserved. External link: http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSN13492692 |