Annan: Ambulance Did Not Carry Rocket

Date: Wed, Oct 13, 2004

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - Israel has acknowledged that a U.N. ambulance in Gaza was carrying a stretcher — not a rocket as it claimed earlier this month, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) said Wednesday.

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman asked Annan to investigate Peter Hansen, head of the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees, after the Israeli army released video taken by an unmanned aircraft flying over the Jebaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip (news - web sites).

Israel, which has long accused the U.N. Relief and Works Agency of bias, said the footage showed militants loading a rocket into an ambulance with U.N. markings on its roof. The United Nations (news - web sites) immediately denied the accusation and said the footage showed a worker loading a stretcher into an ambulance.

Palestinian rescue worker Wahel Ghabayen, 38, said he had run with a stretcher to a school in Jebaliya after he heard that someone there may have been wounded. But the wounded boy had already been moved so he returned to the car, folded the stretcher, "and threw it inside," he said.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it might have been mistaken when it accused the agency, known as UNRWA, of transporting a rocket to militants. The statement stopped short of clearly admitting an error.

But Annan's associate spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters on Wednesday that "the Israeli government has acknowledged that the video of the UNRWA ambulance does in fact show the driver handling a stretcher and not a rocket."

Hansen, UNRWA's commissioner general, told The Associated Press in Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday that he expected an Israeli apology.

"The Israelis have recognized they made a mistake and for that they deserve a credit, but they will deserve more credit if they would stop the campaign with unfounded accusations and instead issue an apology," Hansen said.

Dujarric was asked if the secretary-general expected an apology and if the United Nations considered the matter closed.

"We're waiting to hear back from our team with a full explanation of what happened," he said.

Annan asked a U.N. team that was already headed to the Middle East to investigate the Israeli allegations. It has not yet returned.

In Gillerman's public accusation about the ambulance, he charged that Hansen "for years has expressed anti-Israeli, biased, unrestrained positions and statements."

He also accused the United Nations of a long history of bias against Israel, including a denial — subsequently reversed — that U.N. soldiers witnessed the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas near the Israeli-Lebanese border in 2000.

Annan made clear that he would prefer quiet diplomacy in the case of future incidents.

UNRWA provides health, educational and other services to some 4.2 million Palestinians and their descendants scattered across the Middle East.

SOURCE

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