The Search For The Truth

Martti Ahtisaari, the former President of Finland, will head a fact-finding mission to develop "accurate information" regarding Israeli actions in the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank, said United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The move was approved by the UN Security Council last Friday after Israel consented in a telephone call to Annan from Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

Ahtisaari will be supported by the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, and Cornelio Sommaruga, former Swiss head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The team is expected to meet in Geneva on Wednesday. Ahtisaari said he hoped it would leave for the region by the "latter part of the week". Annan said it was too soon to predict how long the work would take. "We first have to go to Jenin and then determine what needs to be done and make an assessment of how long it will take," he said.

He added that the group wanted "to get the facts as quickly as possible".

Calls had been mounting worldwide for an independent investigation of Jenin. The refugee camp was raided by Israeli troops three weeks ago to uproot alleged terrorist networks and suicide bombers.

Palestinians claim the troops killed hundreds of men, women and children, including many whose homes were shelled or bulldozed over their heads. Israel has offered contradictory casualty figures, saying it killed a few dozen gunmen as the army reported 23 dead in street fighting.

Mixed reactions

Annan emphasized that he expected the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to "cooperate fully" with the UN fact-finding mission. They should provide "full and complete access to all sites, sources of information and individuals that the team will consider necessary to meet in the exercise of their functions", he said.

Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian UN observer, called the panel "people with high integrity and credibility". He said Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat (photo), welcomed them.

But several Israeli Cabinet members criticized the mission. Israel Radio reported that Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer had complained that Annan had not consulted his government.

The Secretary-General denied this. "I did consult Israeli authorities in the sense that they gave me an assurance that they would cooperate with anyone I send down to look into what happened in Jenin," Annan said.

Israel has said it has "nothing to hide".

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An experienced team

Annan said he had tried to put together a panel with considerable experience. "The members of the team are highly respected and independent," he noted. "I hope that I have put together a team that everyone would accept as competent and the best that we could have put together."

Ahtisaari, 65, a former UN Undersecretary-General, headed a 1989-91 peacekeeping operation that led to the independence of Namibia, then under South African control. He was also a mediator in the Balkans and, in 1999, helped broker an agreement with NATO and Yugoslavia that ended the war in Kosovo.

Sommaruga, 70, was president of the ICRC from 1987 to 1999 and now serves on a variety of foundations. Ogata, a 74-year-old academic, was the High Commissioner for Refugees for a decade until 2000. She now represents Japan in reconstruction assistance for Afghanistan.

The team will also be accompanied by General Bill Nash of the United States, who will serve as Military Advisor, and Thomas Peter Fitzgerald of Ireland, who will be the team's Police Advisor. Nash was the UN administrator in the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica. Fitzgerald was the former head of the UN civilian police in Bosnia, as well as in other trouble spots.

According to Annan, sending military and police advisors along had nothing to do with his recent call for deploying a multi-national force to the region. Rather, he said, "it is important to have someone who understands how military campaigns are mounted to be able to guide and work with the team, for them to have an appropriate understanding of what might have happened". The police advisor, he added, could consider issues of crowd control and related matters.

Unwelcome guests

Before the panel was named, Israeli officials let it be known that three names were unacceptable: Norwegian Terje Roed-Larsen, Annan's envoy in the Middle East, Mary Robinson (photo), the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Peter Hansen, the Commissioner of the UN Relief and Works Agency, which is responsible for Palestinian refugees.

All three have been outspoken in condemning Israeli military operations in the occupied territories. The Secretary-General defended the three officials, calling them "extraordinary international civil servants".

The Norwegian Roed-Larsen has sharply criticized the Israeli army for the devastation at Jenin and for its delay in allowing outsiders to see the camp. After a visit to Jenin last week, Roed-Larsen said: "Let me be very clear. I have not and am not accusing anyone of massacres; we do not have the full facts from Jenin. But what I saw yesterday was truly appalling. The destruction was massive; the stench overwhelming."

He also said that combating terrorism did not give the Israelis "a blank check to kill civilians".

Annan said he was disappointed that Roed-Larsen had been publicly attacked for "just talking about what he saw". "He never accused Israel of a massacre," the Secretary-General said. "He never even used the word massacre."

Roed-Larsen facilitated the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejects.