The trio are the core members of the fact-finding mission appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan. In the absence of any hope of a compromise with the Jerusalem government on terms for the inquiry that would be acceptable to the UN, Annan proposed to disband the team effective Thursday.

Meanwhile, first reports of the carnage inside the camp during a week-long Israeli military occupation now seem to have been exaggerated. The latest Palestinian estimates have come closer to those of the Israelis for the numbers of dead and wounded on both sides.

Annan said Wednesday the fact that there now was unlikely to be any independent investigation cast a long shadow on Jenin, and in the wider world, Israel's U-turn is likely to harm its already tarnished image before the court of international public opinion. It was, after all, its principal ally the US that sponsored the Security Council resolution that authorized the UN inquiry.

Israel claims that the camp, which housed between 14,000 and 15,000 destitute Palestinians, was a hotbed of terrorism and that the UN agency running it did nothing to stop their murderous plots.

As Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland; Mrs. Ogata, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees; and Sommaraga, former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, cooled their heels in Geneva waiting formal ordes to pack up and go home, Israel expected a bid, by the Arab states, to have the Security Council force an inquiry. Paradoxically, the US was likely to block such an attempt, using the veto if necessary.

Israel's UN delegate Yehuda Lancry said, "We trust in the US -- and its commitments vis a vis Israel -- to oppose such an initiative."

US ambassador John Negroponte was low-key in his initial response to the news of Jerusalem's snub to the UN and, by extension, to Washington. Let's not look at the rejection of fact-finders in isolation from positive developments that show the power of American diplomacy, he said. Not precisely in those words, but this was his meaning.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's tough line against a Jenin inquiry can win him few admirers in most countries that prize human rights and fundamental freedoms, however vehemently he may protest that Israel was unjustly accused and that the UN has unfairly turned a blind eye toward suicide bombings that killed Israeli civilians. But his stance is warmly applauded at home. No Israeli politician is likely to lose votes for standing up to the widely despised UN, which has a history of one-sided resolutions on every aspect of the Middle East conflict.

The sorry episode is especially sad for Kofi Annan, who has taken to addressing the Israelis as "my friends" and was instrumental in getting Israel accepted into the Western nations caucus after the Asian members would have no truck with the Jewish state. (The Secretary General is not a person who bears a grudge and he's likely to write off the Jenin affair off as something that comes with the territory.)

Unfazed by Israeli intransigence, Annan was off to Washington Thursday for a meeting of the Middle East Quartet, comprising top representatives of the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN.

ILL NEWS FROM ZIMBABWE

Richard Williamson, the US ambassador for special political affairs to the UN, deserves praise for standing up to the autocratic president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. Visiting Harare, the capital, with a 15-nation team of UN Security Council members trying to promote peace in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Williamson told Mugabe that his vicious harassment of the media was unacceptable to the US. He also questioned the circumstances of the president's recent re-election, which followed violence against opposition candidates and their supporters.

A Reuters dispatch reported that an angry exchange lasting several minutes ensued and that Mugabe rejoined that he hasn't accepted that George W. Bush won the US presidential election.

In what may or may not have been a followup to the incident, Andrew Meldrum, an American journalist who is one of the few Western correspondents left in Zimbabwe, was arrested Wednesday and accused of abusing his professional "privileges" and publishing false information. The arrest followed the detention on similar charges Tuesday of Collin Chiwanza and Lloyd Mudiwa, reporters for The Daily News, the country's only independent newspaper.

Its editor, Geoffrey Nyarota, has been selected by an international jury as the winner of this year's World Press Freedom Prize, which was instituted by Unesco. He was arrested two weeks ago after reporting that the presidential election results were doctored. Two other journalists, Iden Wetherell and Dumisani Muleya, were also detained two weeks ago and later released, in the government crackdown on the media.

Meanwhile, Unesco, which organizes the annual celebration of World Press Freedom Day -- it falls this Friday -- is alarmed that governments may be seizing an opportunity to apply restrictions on the press that have long been held in abeyance, using the Sept. 11 terror attacks as the rationale.

The Paris-based UN agency mentioned media curbs proposed or approved in Australia, Britain, Canada, Cyprus, France, India, Jordan, Uganda and the US, and by the 15-nation European Union. Also, of course, in Zimbabwe.