Annan backs Palestinian UN boss

[Englander]

From correspondents in the United Nations
28oct04
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11210921%255E1702,00.html


>>UNITED Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today expressed "full confidence" in the head of the UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees after Israel admitted it wrongly accused the agency of loading a rocket into an ambulance.

>> A UN team that investigated the Israeli allegation concluded it was "unjustified" since the object loaded into the ambulance turned out to be a fold-up stretcher, not a Qassam rocket as Israel had charged, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

>>The secretary-general notes the team's finding, and that following its visit the Israeli government "has admitted that it wrongly identified the stretcher as a Qassam rocket and has publicly withdrawn the allegations", Mr Eckhard said.

>>Israel's UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman had asked Mr Annan to investigate Peter Hansen, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency known as UNRWA, after the Israeli army on October 3 released video taken by an unmanned aircraft flying over the Jebaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.<<