NEW YORK, June 15 (JTA) — Israel has rejected as “fundamentally flawed” a U.N. General Assembly resolution asking Israel to pay more than $1.7 million in compensation for damages sustained by a U.N. compound in southern Lebanon. Israel maintains it is “bound by no legal or moral obligation” to assume responsibility for the reimbursement. Israeli shelling killed about 100 refugees at the Kana compound in what Israel has maintained was a tragic accident. The raids occurred in April, 1996, in retaliation for Hezbollah attacks against northern Israel from areas adjacent to the compound. A U.N. inquiry last year found the Israeli shelling of the compound was unlikely to have been the result of miscalculations, but that such a scenario could not be ruled out. The call for Israeli compensation was part of a broader resolution dealing with the financing of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL. The resolution was adopted last Friday by 127-2, with Israel and the United States casting the no votes. Only Russia abstained. Meanwhile, Israel charged it was being singled out unfairly. “The singling out of one country to bear the costs of damages to a U.N. peacekeeping force, attributable to a military incident, is utterly unprecedented,” said David Peleg, acting Israeli U.N. ambassador, at the General Assembly. The resolution was adopted at the recommendation of a U.N. administrative and budget committee which Peleg charged exceeded its mandate to deal solely with non-political matters. “It has never been charged to assign political blame or responsibility for expenditures to individual member states,” he said. Peleg further placed the blame for the incident on Hezbollah, for provoking the artillery response, and on Lebanon, for “collusion” with the terrorists. “The responsibility for those events lies squarely on the shoulders of the terrorist elements, who are prepared to wage their fanatic war against Israel and the peace process to the last drop of Lebanese blood,” he said. “Such responsibility lies equally with the Lebanese governmental authorities who openly justify, encourage and support such acts.”
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