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Israel Has ‘Other’ Reasons Not To Cooperate With Jenin Mission, Ahtisaari
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Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari
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HELSINKI, May 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Defying Israeli Procedural objections to a planned UN mission of inquiry to the devastated Jenin refugee camp, the UN team leader Friday dubbed the objections invalid and designed to hide the real reason for refusing the mission.
"I never took seriously their objections on the make-up of the mission," said Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, on his return home from Geneva after waiting fruitlessly for two weeks for a green light to travel to the West Bank, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"If you don't want to cooperate, you don't want to cooperate," he said of Israel, which raised a series of alleged objections to the proposed mission, including its composition.
"It would have been difficult to imagine a better group to do the job," he told reporters. "We ourselves called it the 'dream team'," he added.
He said he could not give an opinion on Israel's real reason for refusing the mission to the Jenin camp, devastated by an Israeli military offensive against the Palestinian people last month.
"I can't say anything about Jenin without having been there," he said. "I don't want to think that there may be something to hide; that's not my job. But there's always a suspicion," he said.
He said he saw no hope that the mission could be revived. "Our job is finished. In theory we could speculate about Israel changing its position, but I think that's a very unrealistic proposition," he said.
Singing the same tune in Geneva, a member of the UN team said Friday he regretted the cancellation of the mission, annulled because of Israeli refusal to let it take place.
Cornelio Sommaruga, a former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the fact-finding mission could have made a valuable contribution to uncovering what went on in the camp.
The probe could have provided "a very independent, neutral, impartial report by people not being involved in one sense or another," Sommaruga told reporters.
"And I regret very much that we are not able to do it."
The Jenin mission was formally canceled by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday, two weeks after being first created.
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