UN General Assembly says debate is necessary in order to consider UNHRC resoluti

The United Nations said here Monday that in order for the General Assembly to consider Friday's adoption of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) endorsement of the independent fact-finding Goldstone Report, a debate has to take place.

This statement came as Jean-Victor Nkolo, the spokesperson for General Assembly President Ali Abdussalam Treki, was speaking at a daily news briefing here at the UN Headquarters in New York.

"The president of the General Assembly will conduct consultations with concerned parties and the chairs of the regional and other groups in order to set the appropriate date for the Assembly to consider the report of the independent international fact-finding mission," Nkolo said.

"The bottom line is that the outcome really depends on the debate ... on the member states. The president is consulting for the scheduling of these proceedings and this will have to happen before the end of this part of the proceedings -- before the end of December 2009. So we will have to wait a bit when these consultations are over so that a date is fixed," he said.

On Friday at a special session, the 47-nation UNHRC adopted a resolution to endorse the Goldstone report in a majority vote of 26-5. The UN fact-finding mission's report, which examined alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip, concluded that both Israel and Palestinian militants committed serious war crimes and broke humanitarian law in the three-week conflict that ended in January.

The report recommended that both parties should undertake investigations into the alleged abuses, and if they fail so in six months, the UN Security should refer this issue to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

The Islamic Hamas movement and its government in Gaza have openly welcomed the endorsement. On Friday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement denouncing the "one-sided" UNHRC endorsement and called upon "responsible states to reject it as well."

Source: Xinhua