UN Secretary General set to pass Goldstone report to Security Council

UNITED NATIONS, November 7 (RIA Novosti) - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he will submit the so-called Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council.

The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday adopted a nonbinding resolution urging Israel and Palestinians to investigate war crimes during the December 2008-January 2009 armed conflict in the Gaza Strip.

"I will pass the Goldstone report to the Security Council [for revision], following the request by the General Assembly," Ban Ki-moon said late on Friday after consultations with envoys from the UN Security Council member-countries.

The General Assembly's resolution was passed by a 114-18 vote, but a number of countries, including Russia, abstained from voting. Russia, like many EU states, has said the issue should be considered by the UN Human Rights Council rather than by the Security Council.

A UN Human Rights Council's mission set up to investigate the conflict released a report in September saying that both Israeli and Palestinian forces had committed "war crimes." The mission was led by South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Israel began airstrikes on Gaza in December 2008 in an attempt to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets into Israeli territory. The operation was expanded to a ground offensive, which ended on January 18, 2009. Fighting left more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

Most of the war crimes detailed in the report were on the Israeli side, and the Israeli government has rejected the findings, severely criticizing the report as one-sided. Israel refused to cooperate with the commission, and has said it did enough in working with another UN inquiry, which only looked at the effect of the conflict on UN facilities.