PARIS: The foreign ministers of France and Britain said an "international" inquiry was necessary to resolve the dispute over Israel’s deadly raid on Gaza aid ships, after talks late Sunday in the French capital.
"We think it is very important that there is a credible and transparent investigation… there should be an international presence at minimum" in the probe, said British Foreign Secretary William Hague at a press conference with his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner.
Kouchner added that the international inquiry was needed "because several countries are involved" in the incident.
France also proposed that the European Union could step in to help defuse the situation by checking the cargo on ships bound for the Gaza Strip as well as the Rafah crossing point into the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
"We could very well check the cargo of ships heading to Gaza …We would be very willing to do it," said Kouchner of an EU role.
He noted that the EU had taken charge of the Rafah border crossing from Egypt to Gaza in the past.
"We could again propose that the European Union … control this crossing in a very strict manner," he said.
Hague also spoke of how the EU could "help as it has in the past" by ensuring that a flow of needed aid and economic assistance reaches Gaza, while at the same time addressing Israel’s concerns that weapons are not coming into the territory.
Israel on Sunday resisted pressure for an international probe of the May 31 raid that killed nine Turks.
Israel’s ambassador to Washington Michael Oren said on US television that his country rejects "the idea of an international commission."
"Israel is a democracy. Israel has the ability and the right to investigate itself, not to be investigated by any international board," he told "Fox News Sunday."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy also made an appeal in a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept "a credible and impartial inquiry" into the deadly raid, the French leader’s office said.
Kouchner said France has said from the beginning that it is up to the secretary general of the United Nations to choose the form of the inquiry.
"We think that it is totally in the interests of our Israeli friends to have a wide inquiry, one that is definitely international" in scope, Kouchner said.
On the issue of Iran, another major concern for Britain and France as permanent members of the UN Security Council, Kouchner said he did not expect a Council vote on further sanctions against Tehran over its disputed nuclear program for another week, possibly Monday June 14.
He said the sanctions vote was waiting for the official response from France, Russia and the United States to be handed to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), regarding a nuclear fuel swap deal with Iran brokered by Turkey and Brazil.
