The Security Council will convene Thursday morning to consider an urgent demand by Tunisia that it condemn Israel for the alleged violation of Tunisian sovereignty.
Tunisia requested the meeting in a letter Tuesday from its ambassador to the United Nations, Ahmed Ghezal. He accused Israel of the commando-style assassination of Khalil al-Wazir, second in command of the Palestine Liberation Organization, at his villa in a suburb of Tunis last Saturday morning.
Meanwhile, a statement issued Wednesday in the name of U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has raised eyebrows among diplomats here. The statement said the secretary general expressed concern “at what appears to be evidence of a further infringement by Israel on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Tunisia.”
According to the statement, the secretary general recalled that the Security Council had condemned Israel in 1985 for “an earlier act of armed aggression. . .against Tunisian territory.” He was referring to an air raid on PLO headquarters near Tunis, the Tunisian capital.
Israel took credit for that attack and justified it as part of its war against terrorism. But Israel has had no comment on the murder of Wazir, also known as Abu Jihad, whom it considered the mastermind behind the four-month-old Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“The secretary general has consistently expressed his condemnation of acts of assassination,” the U.N. statement said. Some diplomats here expressed surprise at what they said was a hasty conclusion by Perez de Cuellar that Israel was in fact behind the assassination.
The letter from the Tunisian envoy said that it has been established “without any ambiguity” that the assassination was the responsibility of the Israeli government. Tunisia, he said, had once again become the target of Israeli “state terrorism.”
The letter led to consultations here Tuesday and Wednesday among Security Council members, who asked the council’s current president, Peter Dinge Zuze of Zambia, to convene the 15-member body.
Tunisia is expected to ask for measures to prevent Israel from taking further acts against its sovereignty.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
