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Sunday 25 January 2009

UN called to action against Israel

Iran calls on the UN to take legal action against Israel after its soldiers admitted to the illegal use of white phosphorous in Gaza.

The Iranian ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, called on the United Nations on Sunday to address international concern over possible war crimes committed by Tel Aviv in its recent military operations in Gaza.

“Israel’s extreme measures against Gazans constitute a breach of humanitarian law,” Khazaee affirmed in a meeting with Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ambassadors in New York.

After weeks of denying that it used white phosphorus in the densely-populated Gaza Strip, the Israeli military finally admitted Friday that it had pounded the Palestinian coast with at least twenty white phosphorus bombs.

The 1980 third Convention on Conventional Weapons has banned the use of white phosphorus as a weapon, even against military targets situated within population centers.

International attorneys have filed war crime charges against 15 Israeli political and military officials, including Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak.

Israeli officials cannot be tried by the International Court of Justice at The Hague because Tel Aviv is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Signatories to the Geneva Convention, however, can prosecute those involved in the 23-day assault on Gaza as culpable of war crimes. More