U.N.'s Ban names Turk, Israeli to flotilla probe

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday named two veteran Turkish and Israeli diplomats to a panel that will investigate Israel's deadly May 31 commando raid on an aid flotilla.

Joseph Ciechanover, a former senior official at Israel's Foreign Ministry, will be the Israeli representative on the panel, while the Turkish member will be Ozdem Sanberk, a diplomat who held senior positions in the Turkish Foreign Minister and the United Nations.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer will be the chairman of the panel, with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe acting as vice chairman. The committee will hold its first meeting on August 10 and expects to submit an initial progress report in mid-September.

Israel's May 31 attack on a Turkish aid flotilla attempting to break through the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists and sparked international outrage.

The action led to a sharp deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations and forced Israel to ease the blockade, which the Jewish state says aims to prevent Palestinian Hamas militants from acquiring the military capacity to attack Israel.

After reacting coolly to the idea of a U.N. investigation -- Israel has already completed its own military investigation and started a civilian one -- Israel eventually agreed to cooperate with an investigative panel set up by Ban.

The Obama administration strongly urged Israel to cooperate with the panel, diplomats in New York have told Reuters.

U.N. officials said that the panel will look at the circumstances of the raid and review the results of the Turkish and Israeli investigations, as well as consider ways to avoid similar incidents in the future.

Western diplomats, however, say privately that the panel's mandate remains unclear.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice infuriated Turkey this week when she issued a statement saying that the panel was "not a substitute for those national investigations" and its focus was "appropriately on the future."

The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires in Ankara and expressed its irritation at what a Turkish official told Reuters was an "alternative interpretation" of Ban's investigative panel.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Paul Simao)