The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, has selected former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari to lead a three-member team to investigate Israel's siege of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
Ahtisaari has often served as a troubleshooter for the United Nations since heading a 1989-91 peacekeeping operation that led to the independence of Namibia, then under South African control.
Ahtisaari is joined by Sadako Ogata, the former UN High Commissioner For Refugees and Cornelio Somarruga, the former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Israel reluctantly agreed to the mission on Friday, and it was then approved by the U.N. Security Council. The operation was labeled a fact-finding team rather than an investigative mission and would report to Annan rather than the council.
But before the team was named, Israeli officials let it be known that three names were unacceptable: Norwegian Terje Roed-Larsen, Annan's envoy in the Middle East, who criticized the army for the Jenin operation; Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights; and Peter Hansen, the commissioner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), responsible for Palestinian refugees.