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U.N. Council votes for Jenin Fast Finding Mission by Alistair Lyon

UN Resolutions and Palestine

Peace Proposals

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council voted for a U.N. fact-finding mission on Israel's devastating military assault in the Jenin refugee camp, getting the green light ,from Israel which said it had nothing to hide.

As delegates at the United Nations voted unanimously late on Friday to send a "fact- finding team" to the West Bank city, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sought a way out of Israel's siege of his Ramallah compound by suggesting the suspected killers of an Israeli cabinet minister be tried in a Palestinian court. Israel spurned the offer.

The United States drafted the U.N. resolution after initially threatening to veto an Arab- drafted measure calling for a formal U.N. investigation of the "massacres" in Jenin, the scene of the heaviest fighting in a three-week Israeli offensive launched after suicide bombings killed scores of Israelis.

The final resolution avoids the word "investigation" and welcomes efforts by U.N.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan to "develop accurate information regarding recent events in the Jenin refugee camp."

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had earlier told Annan he was welcome to send representatives.

The resolution also expresses concern at the "dire humanitarian situation of Palestinian civilians" and a report of "an unknown number of deaths and destruction."

Palestinian U.N. observer Nasser al-Kidwa said the vote was crucial. "We believe a

serious war crime was committed, a serious massacre was committed, and therefore some people will have to be held responsible," he said.

But Aaron Jacob, Israel's Deputy U.N. Ambassador, said: "We have nothing to hide.

There was no massacre in Jenin. There was a fierce battle between Israeli troops and Palestinian terrorists."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who sent tanks to Arafat's offices when he launched the West Bank offensive on March 29, has said he will maintain the siege until the suspects are handed over.

A spokesman for Sharon said the men holed up in Arafat's compound must be extradited for the October assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

GAZA VIOLENCE FLARES

The army withdrew from Jenin and the camp on Friday as violence flared in the Gaza Strip, where six Palestinians, including a suicide bomber, were reported killed.

Arafat's offer to have Zeevi's suspected killers put on trial, relayed by his adviser Mohammed Rashid, appeared to be an attempt to break the impasse at his headquarters and restore his freedom of movement.

"The Palestinian side accepts and welcomes the call by President Bush to submit those accused of killing Zeevi to the Palestinian justice (system)," Rashid said.

Bush said on Thursday that Zeevi's suspected assassins, from the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), should be brought to justice, but did not say where.

The PFLP said after Zeevi's shooting in a Jerusalem hotel that it had killed him in revenge for Israel's assassination of the group's leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, in August.
Rashid said the suspects had been moved to the presidential compound from a prison in Nablus in February for investigation.

"That doesn't change anything," Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin said of the Palestinian offer to try them, which he said came far too late. "They have to be extradited."
In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian bomber blew himself up in a car outside the Gush Khatif bloc of Jewish settlements but caused no other casualties, Israeli military sources said.

It was the first suicide bombing since two that killed a total of 14 people during Secretary of State Colin Powell's abortive peace mission to the region. Powell left on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops were reported to have killed five Palestinians, at least two of them gunmen.

The Gaza Strip had been relatively quiet during Israel's sweeping West Bank offensive into Palestinian-ruled cities.

In Egypt, a 40-year-old Israeli tourist was stabbed to death near the Sinai resort of Nuweiba, Egyptian security sources said, adding that his body had been found on Thursday night.

In Ramallah, a Palestinian doctor said an Israeli sniper had killed a 14-year-old boy, just before the army lifted a curfew.

Refugees buried their dead and sifted through flattened homes in the Jenin camp, which Israel calls a "nest of terror."

An army statement said Israeli forces had "completed their mission in Jenin," but remained around the city.

Amnesty International said there were indications of serious human rights abuses by Israel at the camp, including houses demolished with people still in them and alleged executions.

BUSH WANTS FACTS

Bush's spokesman said the U.S. president wants the facts to come out about the Israeli attack on the camp.

The army says it did its best to avoid civilian casualties in the Jenin camp and only blew up or bulldozed houses where gunmen had set booby-traps or were refusing to surrender.

Israeli troops thrust into the West Bank village of Beit Dajan, near Nablus, on Friday night, witnesses said.

Israel had said troops would quit Jenin and Nablus by Sunday but stay at Arafat's compound and near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem until standoffs with militants ended.

A hospital official said the Jenin camp body count had risen to 39 after the discovery of three more corpses as Palestinians buried about 35 of them in common graves just outside the camp.

The official said the death toll could climb to between 200 and 400. Israel says about 70 Palestinians died, mostly fighters. Twenty-three Israeli troops were killed in Jenin.

At least 1,287 Palestinians and 452 Israelis have died since a Palestinian revolt against occupation erupted 18 months ago.