UN chief Ban Ki-moon has met with a four-member panel probing Israel's bloody commando raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, and stressed anew that the enquiry was not meant to determine criminal responsibility.
The May 31 raid, in which Israeli troops killed nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists, sparked international outrage and led to the easing of a four-year blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
The UN panel, chaired by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer and with former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe as vice chairman, was due to formally begin its task of reviewing domestic probes of the raid by Israel and Turkey later Tuesday.
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The development comes as Israel threatened Tuesday to pull out of the UN probe a day after Ban denied having agreed that the panel could not grill Israeli soldiers.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that his country "would not cooperate with any commission that would ask to question soldiers," according to his spokesman Nir Hefetz.
"Before Israel gave the green light to its participation in the panel we had discreet negotiations in order to ensure that this commission would not harm the vital interests of Israel," he added.
On Tuesday,the United Nations reaffirmed that its probe was "not designed to determine individual criminal responsibility, but to examine and identify the facts, circumstances and the context of the incident, as well as to recommend ways of avoiding future incidents."
The Palmer-led team, which includes an Israeli and a Turk, "will receive and review reports of national investigations into the incident and request such clarifications and information as it may require from relevant national authorities," it added.
Ban expressed hope that the UN probe would make "a positive contribution to the broader peace process, and more specifically to improving relations between Turkey and Israel."
He reminded Palmer's team to discharge its mandate in line with the UN Security Council's call for an independent, credible and impartial probe of the raid.
Netanyahu said Monday that Israel had acted in line with international law, and accused Turkey of seeking a high-profile confrontation that saw activists attack its commandos with iron bars and knives.
Turkey rejected the claim.
