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UN
General Assembly Begins Emergency Session On Jenin
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Remain of Jenin |
UNITED
NATIONS, May 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The General
Assembly began a special emergency session Tuesday that was expected
to adopt a resolution condemning Israel's refusal to cooperate with a
UN fact-finding mission to the Jenin refugee camp.
A
total of 38 speakers were due to take part in the session, requested
by Arab countries after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan disbanded the
10-day-old mission Thursday without having set foot in the Middle
East.
Nasser
Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer to the United Nations, noted that
both Israel and the Security Council had initially welcomed the
mission, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
However,
he told the Assembly, the Council "stood by as a spectator"
while Israel "resorted to blackmail" to get Annan to change
the members of his team and its methods of work.
The
first speaker, South Africa's Ambassador to the UN, Dumisani Kumalo,
urged the Assembly to give the fullest support to a draft resolution
condemning Israel's "brutal assaults" on Palestinian
civilians, particularly in Jenin.
Earlier
drafts referred to the Israeli attacks as "war crimes" and
"atrocities." But the text was softened to win broader
support, according to Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz.
The
draft also requested Annan to "present a report, drawing upon the
available resources and information, on recent events in Jenin and in
other Palestinian cities."
Under
rules of procedure known as "Uniting for Peace," the
Assembly may call a special emergency session if the Security Council
is unable to assume its primary responsibility for maintenance of
international peace and security.
It
first did so in November 1956 and held 10 such sessions in all, six of
them on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The
10th session met in April 1997 and was suspended seven times;
Tuesday's meeting was the eighth of that session.
Al-Kidwa
said the Council "has been unable to fulfill its responsibility
towards the Middle East over the past 16 months," since the start
of the second Intifada against Israeli occupation.
He
noted that on March 13, the Council adopted its historic Resolution
1397, the first to endorse the vision of a Palestinian state.
But,
he said, Israel refused to cooperate with 29 Council resolutions and
nothing had happened.
"The
question is not whether the Security Council has lost its
authority," Al-Kidwa said. "That has already happened. The
question is whether it can restore its authority," he added.
Jenin
became a kind of catchword for the Israeli incursions that continue
unabated; on April 19, the UN Security Council passed resolution 1405,
reaffirming previous resolutions calling for Israeli withdrawal from
Palestinian territories and welcoming the initiative taken by UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan in trying to establish a fact-finding
mission to Jenin.
However,
the Jenin fact-finding mission was disbanded, after repeated
rejections and delays by Israeli authorities, who initially accepted
the idea.
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