Critics accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday of letting down his people by bowing to U.S. pressure and postponing action on a U.N. report that criticised Israel's offensive in Gaza, Reuters reported. The Palestinian Authority agreed in Geneva on Friday to defer a vote in the United Nations Human Rights Council on a resolution that would have condemned Israel's failure to cooperate with a U.N. war crimes investigation led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone. It would also have forwarded his report to the Security Council. Hamas, the Islamist group which runs the Gaza Strip, condemned Abbas, but the president and his Palestinian Authority also faced anger from commentators in their own backyard in the West Bank, and even criticism within Abbas's own Fatah party. "Abu Mazen has lost a lot from this," said Shawan Jabarin, who runs the al-Haq human rights watchdog in Ramallah, using Abbas's familiar name. "Even the average man in the street thinks Abu Mazen has given up the rights of the victims and given up on pursuing Israeli war criminals," Jabarin added. A group of 14 rights groups issued a statement condemning the consent to a delay and vowing to "seek justice". The United States said it was in the interests of efforts to relaunch peace negotiations between Abbas and Israel that the U.N. body give both Israel and Hamas more time to pursue Goldstone's recommendations that they each launch their own credible investigations into possible crimes in January's war. Palestinians say over 900 of 1,400 people killed in Gaza were civilians. Abbas's foreign minister, Riyad al-Malki, said the Authority agreed with postponing until March a vote that could lead to the Security Council referring Israel and Hamas to the International Criminal Court. Israel has denounced the report as biased. -- SPA
