UNITED NATIONS, July 26 (Saba) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to tell the General Assembly later Monday that the UN needs more time to translate the response he received from the Palestinian Authority concerning the 2008-09 war on Gaza, a UN official told KUNA on Monday, according to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).

The General Assembly adopted a resolution on February 26 calling on Israel and the "Palestinian side" to conduct an "independent, credible" investigation in conformity with international standards into the "serious violations" of international humanitarian and international human rights law as reported by Justice Richard Goldstone last year.
Goldstone concluded in his report that both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity, during the Gaza war.

The assembly also asked the Secretary-General to report, within five months, on the implementation of the resolution, with a view to considering further action, if necessary, by the relevant UN organs, including the Security Council. The deadline is today.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas mandated a group of Palestinian independent experts to investigate the circumstances of the war on Gaza.

Their 334-page report, conveyed to the UN Secretariat last week by Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour, exposed the "dirty linen" of the Palestinian Authority (PA), a diplomat told KUNA last week, adding that the experts detailed the "systematic human rights violations" by the PA of the Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, especially the Hamas sympathizers.

In the resolution's preambular part, the Assembly "reaffirmed the obligation of all parties to respect international humanitarian law and international human rights law, reiterated the importance of the safety and well-being of all civilians, and stressed the need to ensure accountability for all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in order to prevent impunity and deter further violations." The Palestinian four-expert panel is headed by Palestinian Judge Aissa Abu Sharar, assisted by a number of legal advisors, including Egyptian Sherif Besyouni.

Ban already received responses from Israel and Switzerland, which the assembly requested, as depositary of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, to reconvene "as soon as possible" a Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention on measures to enforce the Convention in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Saba