Assassination of PLO official in Lebanon – Letter from Palestine

    Identical letters dated 25 March 2009 from the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council

  I write to you with regard to the shocking assassination of a Palestinian official in Lebanon on 23 March 2009, a dangerous development with potentially far-reaching, destabilizing consequences.

  The Palestinian people and their leadership mourn the loss of General Kamal Naji (known as Kamal Midhat), Deputy Representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon and a prominent Palestinian leader, who was assassinated in a deliberate, violent attack that claimed his life and that of three other PLO officials accompanying him and seriously injured several other people. Mr. Naji’s convoy was leaving a Palestinian refugee camp, Miyeh Miyeh, close to the city of Sidon in Lebanon when a roadside bomb was detonated between the Palestinian and Lebanese checkpoints outside the camp entrance. The powerful explosion decimated Naji’s car, throwing its charred remains metres away from the site of the attack.

  We condemn this terrorist attack in the strongest terms and we note with grave concern the striking similarity between the explosion in this assassination and other such attacks in which Lebanese officials were assassinated in the past. We bring this matter to your attention at this time because the incendiary and destabilizing impact of such a criminal, deliberate attack clearly cannot be underestimated and must be seriously addressed. In this regard, the Palestinian leadership strongly believes that the main target of such a malicious act is stability in Lebanon and within the Palestinian refugee camps throughout the country as well as the strengthened, cooperative Palestinian-Lebanese relations. In this context, we assure the international community that we will do our utmost to prevent this crime from negatively affecting Palestinian-Lebanese relations as well as intra-Palestinian relations within the refugee camps in Lebanon.

  An important first step in addressing this latest assassination is the formal investigation that has been undertaken by the Lebanese authorities. The Palestinian leadership has full confidence that this investigation will be thorough and professional, leading to the indictment and punishment of the perpetrators of this most serious crime. In this regard, we urge all concerned parties in the international community to extend their full cooperation to the investigation in order to ensure that security and stability in Lebanon is preserved and that those wishing to sabotage Lebanon’s security and stability are stopped swiftly and clearly receive the message that such criminal acts of brutality will not be tolerated.

  I would be grateful if you would arrange to have the text of the present letter distributed as a document of the General Assembly, under agenda item 16, as well as of the Security Council.

(Signed ) Dr. Riyad Mansour

Ambassador

Permanent Observer

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