NEW YORK (voa) – U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is canceling a fact-finding mission to the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin.
In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Mr. Annan said that Thursday he will disband the team he assembled for the mission.
Israel refused to cooperate with the team, raising objections to its membership and mandate. Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari was to lead the team, which had been waiting in Geneva for a go-ahead for nearly a week.
U.S. officials say they regret the mission’s collapse, saying they had worked to make it happen.
Palestinians say Israeli forces carried out a massacre during their offensive into the Jenin camp early last month. Israel strongly denies the allegations, but said the U.N. fact-finding mission was likely to find Israel at fault in its report.
In his letter, Mr. Annan says that conditions are changing in the Jenin camp day by day, making it more and more difficult to establish with any certainty what happened there.
He says recent events in the camp will cast a “long shadow” in the absence of a fact-finding exercise.
Israel launched its offensive into Jenin and other Palestinian West Bank cities in what Israeli officials called an operation to destroy the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure. The offensive followed a series of deadly Palestinian suicide bombings inside Israel.
Palestinians originally charged that hundreds of civilians died in the alleged massacre at Jenin. But Wednesday, Palestinian medical sources in the camp said they have uncovered 52 bodies. Palestinian officials say many more bodies may be buried under piles of rubble in the devastated camp, which was the site of very heavy fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants.
