U.N. council voices concern about Gaza war report
By http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=uk&n=Louis.Charbonneau Louis Charbonneau
May 13, 2009 
Reuters
Original Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKTRE54C7C920090513
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Members of the Security Council voiced concern Wednesday about a U.N. inquiry that accused Israel of negligence and recklessness when it struck U.N. facilities during its January attacks on the Gaza Strip.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed the four-person inquiry board in February, said last week he would seek compensation for damage put at more than $11 million but would not follow the panel's call for further investigations.
The members of the council expressed their concern about the findings of the report, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the Security Council, told reporters.
The 15 council members were not demanding any follow-up action from Ban, though Churkin said they had expressed a general interest to be kept abreast of the progress of the matter as the secretary-general deems appropriate.
Libya, an arch foe of Israel and the only Arab nation on the Security Council, has drafted a resolution in which the council would condemn Israel's war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. But Churkin said it appeared Libya had decided not to put the draft text to a vote.
Diplomats said the draft had no chance of passing, since the United States, Britain and France -- all veto-wielding permanent council members -- would have struck it down.
Instead, the Western powers agreed to back a non-binding expression of the council's concern, they said.
Israeli officials rejected the U.N. report on Gaza as one-sided, saying it ignored the fact that Israel was fighting a war against a terrorist organisation -- Hamas.
Israel's armed forces conducted their own investigation into the conduct of the December-January Gaza campaign and said last month it had found no serious misconduct by Israeli troops, who had acted within international law.
GROSS NEGLIGENCE
Israel launched the campaign to try to halt Palestinian rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled strip. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed but the sides differ over how many were combatants. Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians.
The U.N. inquiry led by Briton Ian Martin, a former head of rights group Amnesty International who later joined the United Nations, investigated nine incidents of damage to U.N. property and faulted Israel in seven of them. It blamed Hamas in one case and could not establish responsibility in another.
In several cases, the report found Israel had breached the inviolability of United Nations premises, had not respected U.N. immunity and was responsible for deaths and injuries.
In a January 15 incident, the shelling of the Gaza compound of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) with high explosive and white phosphorus, an incendiary substance, was grossly negligent, amounting to recklessness, it said. Three people were injured.
Israel has said that the damage to U.N. premises was caused unintentionally when Israeli troops responded to Palestinian fire. The U.N. report said, however, that Israel had falsely asserted that the fire had come from within U.N. facilities.