UN Special Envoy to the Middle East Terje Larsen considered resigning when it emerged that he was "misled" and consequently "misled" the Israeli government over the UN's videotape of the kidnapping of three Israel soldiers last October, according to Haaretz newspaper on Monday.
The paper said that the situation had led to UN officials passing the buck over who is to blame for covering up information about the tape and why.
Larsen, said the paper, traveled to New York on Friday for talks at UN headquarters, deciding to stay on in his position when it became clear to him that even UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had not known that “his people were in possession of such a tape.”
Jean-Marie Guehenno, the Undersecretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, announced on Friday that Larsen and the secretary general's personal envoy for southern Lebanon, Staffan de Mistura, had had no part in checking the tape and had not even known of its existence, the paper quoted him as saying.
Guehenno is responsible for the UNIFIL force in south Lebanon, and his men caught the Hizbollah operatives on tape.
The chain of command involved in dealing with the tape begins with the Indian soldiers deployed on the Israel-Lebanon border and goes all the way up to Guehenno's office. Guehenno never reported the existence of the tape to his superior, Annan, the paper added.
De Mistura, Annan's man in Lebanon, learned of the tape's existence a short time after the soldiers were kidnapped from the Shabaa Farms area in October 2000.
He formally wrote to the then UNIFIL commander, Ghanaian Seth Kofi Obeng, asking him to hand over the tape. Obeng's reply did not come quickly and when he did respond, he vehemently denied the existence of the tape, according to the paper.
Obeng has since finished his stint as UNIFIL commander and is now chief of staff of the Ghanaian army.
Guehenno paid an official visit to his forces on May 28-29. He was accompanied by Larsen during his meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. During the meeting, the Israelis asked about the existence of the videotape.
Guehenno contended that two internal investigations carried out by the UN had revealed that the tape did not exist, adding, however, that he was prepared to carry out a third inquiry, according to the paper.
At the Israeli minister’s request, the UN official met the following day with a senior intelligence officer who once again raised the issue of the videotape.
But Guehenno again denied that such a tape existed, saying, however, that he would conduct another investigation because of Israel's persistence.
One month later, on June 28, the defense minister met with Larsen and De Mistura.
The head of the Israeli Northern Command, Gabi Ashkenazi, who was also in attendance, said, "I know the tape exists."
Larsen said that it was an insult to the UN secretary general that he would hide such a thing.
But Ashkenazi would not give up. At the end of the meeting, he took Larsen aside and warned him that he was having the wool pulled over his eyes, the paper quoted him as saying.
Larsen thus decided to check again with the general staff back in New York. To his surprise, he found that the tape did indeed exist. He immediately called Ben-Eliezer and apologized, said the paper.
UN officials have been prohibited from responding to the incident and the UN spokesman's office said that it would not respond to reporters' questions before Tuesday.
On Saturday, the Lebanese government and Hizbollah movement slammed the UN’s decision to let Israel view the video cassette.
Hizbollah said in a statement the move "leads us to raise questions on the role of the United Nations in passing on information to Israel, whatever the content of the cassette may be."
The Lebanese presidency said in a statement: "The Lebanese authorities refuse to view the video cassette filmed by an Indian member of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) last October, following the operation which resulted in the capture of Israeli soldiers in the Shabaa Farms sector."
"The Lebanese authorities consider that the viewing of this video cassette would constitute a dangerous precedent and transmit information gathered on Lebanese territory to the Israeli enemy, which is in contradiction of UNIFIL's mission," the statement added – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
