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UN Mission To Jenin Camp Awaiting Israeli Approval For Departure
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| U.N. fact-finding mission will leave after an Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday |
GENEVA, April 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.N. fact-finding mission into Israel's assault on the Jenin refugee camp confirmed it was aiming to leave after an Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday.
The cabinet is expected to make a formal decision on its acceptance of the mission after clarifications from meetings between U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Israeli officials in New York, U.N. officials said Saturday.
"I think it is clear that we would wait for the Israeli cabinet meeting," mission spokesman Stephane Dujarric told AFP here. "We would probably not leave before mid-afternoon tomorrow (Sunday)."
The full mission, led by Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari, is currently assembling at the U.N.'s European headquarters in Geneva and arranging details of its work.
Dujarric said more specialists were expected to arrive in the Swiss city and the whole team of about 20 people would fly out to the Middle East on an aircraft provided by the Swiss government.
Along with Ahtisaari, the top members of the team are Cornelio Sommaruga, the Swiss former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and Sadako Ogata of Japan, the former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
On Friday, the fact-finding team said it had added two senior police officers to assist Peter Fitzgerald, the team's police adviser.
Earlier it had added two senior officers as back-up for its military adviser, U.S. General Robert Nash, apparently in an effort to meet Israel's concern that it include experts on military operations and counter-terrorism. Other experts include forensic and legal specialists.
The Palestinians say hundreds of civilians were massacred in Jenin during Israel's military assault on the West Bank that was launched March 29.
Israel denies the accusations and says dozens of Palestinians died in a battle that also killed 23 Israeli soldiers, and the army claims the Palestinians moved bodies from a cemetery before the mission arrives.
On Friday, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan strongly hinted that Israel had accepted the mission and he agreed to delay the team's arrival for one day, to Sunday.
Annan's decision was announced by his spokesman, Fred Eckhard, after 24 hours of intermittent talks between senior U.N. officials and four Israeli envoys on the team's composition and its terms of reference.
The Security Council, which suspended work Thursday on a draft resolution demanding Israel's full cooperation with the fact-finding team, said it had taken note of the statement "and we expect this time schedule to be observed."
Asked whether he foresaw any difficulty, the Council President, Sergei Lavrov, Russian ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters:
"We were not parties to the discussions. We reiterated our support for (Annan). He expressed some assessment of the discussions in a positive way, and we have no reason to doubt his assessment."
In another development, U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday told Israel to halt its incursions into Palestinian areas "now".
"(The) Israelis understand my position. I've been very clear and there has been some progress, but it's now time to quit it altogether; it's time to end this," Bush said, making his second such appeal in two days.
The comments came one day after Bush's talks with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, in which the two leaders discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its implications for U.S. relations with Arab countries.
Bush spoke amid signs of a rift within his foreign policy team, as several State Department officials admitted privately they were demoralized by administration infighting over the Middle East.
Pressure from the White House meanwhile, prompted Congress to delay legislation which branded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a "terrorist" after Bush aides it could hamper their peace efforts.
Bush first called for an end to the incursions, which Sharon's government claims are targeting “suicide bombers”, on April 4, but later said he was satisfied with Israel's limited withdrawal.
The operation has besieged Arafat in his Ramallah compound and trapped armed Palestinians in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.
The White House said Friday that Crown Prince Abdullah had presented Bush with an eight point list of Middle East peace objectives.
The plan, which appears to be largely an amalgam of existing U.S. and Saudi proposals for ending the bloody Israel-Palestinian conflict, recommends :
- An Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian-ruled areas taken over in recent incursions;
- A lifting of the Israeli siege of Ramallah;
- The creation of a multinational peace force for the territories;
- The reconstruction of Palestinian infrastructure devastated by the fighting;
- Talks on U.S. security plans, including the Tenet work plan and the Mitchell plan;
- The halting of Israeli settlement building;
- A renunciation of violence by both sides;
- A concerted U.S. attempt to implement U.N. resolution 242 passed in 1967, which called for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab lands.
On Saturday, Salah Taamari, the chief Palestinian negotiator in talks to end the standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity headed to Ramallah to brief Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on the negotiations, Palestinian officials said.
Al-Taamari's meeting in the besieged Palestinian Authority compound was to emphasize that Arafat was in charge of negotiations and not to revamp the Palestinian position, an official said. "This is a leadership decision, not a local one," she said.
Asked why Taamari could not brief Arafat by phone, she said: "If we told reporters that, who would accept that. By meeting here we are showing that directions are coming from President Arafat."
More than 200 Palestinians, among whom 30 are “wanted” by Israel and another 30 or so priests and monks, have been trapped inside the church since April 2.
Talks to end the siege have stalled over Israel's refusal to accept a Palestinian proposal to evacuate all the gunmen to Gaza and the Palestinians' rejection of an Israeli proposal that they either face life exile or trial in Israel.
Officials in Ramallah did not know if European diplomat Alister Cook had been given approved to travel to Ramallah with Taamari.
The Palestinians want the European Union to act as guarantor for any agreement to evacuate the basilica.
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