Report on Jenin events set for release on Thursday - UN spokesman

A United Nations report on recent events in Jenin and other Palestinian cities is expected to be made public on Thursday morning, a UN spokesman announced today.

Spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters in New York that the report should be available in all UN languages, with electronic copies posted to the UN web site.

Spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters in New York that the report should be available in all UN languages, with electronic copies posted to the UN web site.

The document comes in response to a General Assembly resolution adopted in May requesting that Secretary-General Kofi Annan "present a report, drawing upon the available resources and information, on the recent events that took place in Jenin and in other Palestinian cities."

The Assembly measure, passed following 25 rounds of voting on separate paragraphs, decried Israel’s refusal to cooperate with a fact-finding mission which had been initiated by the Secretary-General and backed by the Security Council in order to develop accurate information regarding recent events at the Jenin refugee camp.

The Assembly adopted the resolution during its resumed tenth emergency special session on "Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory"

The week before the Assembly's action, the Secretary-General, citing, in part, a lack of cooperation from Israel and the mission's inability to travel to the area in the near future, had informed the Security Council in a letter that he would disband the team. Team members, led by Martti Ahtisaari, the former President of Finland, had gathered in Geneva in preparation for their mission before it became clear that their visit to the area would not be possible.

"Throughout this process, the UN has made every effort to accommodate the concerns of the Government of Israel, within the mandate given to me by the Security Council," the Secretary-General wrote, referring to Council resolution 1405, adopted in April. That text had welcomed Mr. Annan's initiative to develop accurate information about recent events in the Jenin camp through a fact-finding team.