Agencies

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Friday he will send a report calling for Israel and the Palestinians to investigate alleged war crimes during last winter's conflict in Gaza to the UN Security Council "as soon as possible", the Associated Press reported.

The 15 council members have already received copies of the 575-page report by an expert panel chaired by South African Judge Richard Goldstone. But the General Assembly in a resolution adopted Thursday asks the secretary general to transmit it, which will make the report an official Security Council document.

The Goldstone report recommended that the Security Council require both sides to carry out credible investigations into alleged abuses during the Gaza conflict - in which 13 Israelis and almost 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed, and thousands wounded - and to follow that up with action in their courts within three months.

If either side refuses, the investigators recommended the Security Council refer the evidence for prosecution by the International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

The Security Council, however, is highly unlikely to take any action.

The United States has repeatedly said the report belongs in the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, which appointed the Goldstone panel. Diplomats said Russia and China also do not want the Security Council dealing with human rights issues. All three countries have veto power in the Security Council.

The International Criminal Court can only investigate crimes on the territory of nations that recognise its jurisdiction, unless a case is referred to it by the Security Council.

The Palestinian Authority recognised the court in January and urged prosecutors to launch an investigation into crimes committed during the Gaza conflict, but prosecutors are investigating whether this is possible since there is no state of Palestine.

The General Assembly resolution "endorses" the Goldstone report and asks Ban for a report in three months on its implementation.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN observer, said the Palestinians will return to the General Assembly to consider the secretary general's report "with a view for further action" to pursue justice for Palestinian victims in the Security Council and the International Criminal Court.

The General Assembly resolution also calls on Switzerland to reconvene a meeting of the parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which spells out the obligations of an occupying power, and Mansour said the Palestinians will start preparing for this.

Israel reiterated its rejection of the Goldstone report and said Friday the General Assembly resolution did not have "the support of the moral majority". The report concluded that Israel used disproportionate force, deliberately targeting civilians, using Palestinians as human shields, and destroying civilian infrastructure during the incursion to root out Palestinian rocket squads targeting southern Israel.

It accused Palestinian armed groups of deliberately targeting civilians and trying to spread terror through its rocket attacks on southern Israel. Hamas, the main rival to the Palestinian Authority which Mansour represents, controls Gaza and most armed groups in the territory.

The Goldstone panel concluded that both Israel and Palestinian fighters committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the Gaza war.

Khaled Mishaal

Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday to stop seeking compromise with Israel but offered him an olive branch, saying Palestinians must end their divisions, Reuters reported.

Sounding conciliatory after raising the political ante against Abbas following his call for national elections last month, Mishaal said the Islamist group Hamas "stretches its hand" to Abbas' Fateh faction to end divisions between the two sides undermining the Palestinian cause.

"Courage dictates that we, as leaders of the Palestinians, be frank with our people and evaluate what compromise has brought us, decide together to suspend or freeze the political settlement process and pursue our real national options," Mishaal told a rally in the Syrian capital.

He said compromise with Israel, starting with the 1993 Oslo Accords, had failed to stop Israeli settlement expansion and brought Palestinians no closer to establishing an independent state in the land Israel has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War.

Abbas suspended talks with Israel during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December and US efforts to re-start them have since failed. Hamas has opposed the talks and rejected Western demands to recognise Israel, renounce armed struggle and accept existing interim peace deals.

"Any leader who insists on the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and on restoring the land, even to the 1967 borders ... must know that the way to do this is not through negotiations or betting on the Americans but through holy struggle, resistance and national unity," Mishaal said.