UN aide warns Caterpillar over sales to Israel

1.00pm

NEW YORK - The sale of bulldozers by Caterpillar Inc. to the Israeli military could violate Palestinians' human rights, a UN human rights investigator has warned the US heavy equipment maker.

Jean Ziegler, an expert on the right to food in the Geneva offices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote Caterpillar that Israel used the bulldozers to raze homes and destroy crops, preventing the Palestinians from obtaining adequate food supplies and aggravating their "already precarious living conditions."

Caterpillar's actions "might involve complicity or acceptance on the part of your company to actual and potential violations of human rights, including the right to food," Ziegler wrote Caterpillar Chief Executive James Owens. A copy of his May 28 letter was obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

Ziegler accused Caterpillar of supplying the Israeli military with armoured bulldozers, but Caterpillar, which is headquartered in Peoria, Illinois, said the bulldozers were standard-issue equipment that later may have been modified.

Israel used the bulldozers "to destroy agricultural farms, greenhouses, ancient olive groves and agricultural fields planted with crops, as well as numerous Palestinian homes and sometimes human lives, including that of the American peace activist, Rachel Corrie," Ziegler said.

Corrie, 23, has become a hero of the Palestinian uprising against Israel in the occupied territories. A member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement, she died last year in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza after being hit by a concrete slab that slid down a mound of earth.

The Israeli army said the bulldozer driver never saw her.

Caterpillar spokesman Ben Cordani said the company's sales to Israel comply with US law and are conducted through Washington's Foreign Military Sales Programme.

"These are standard-issue machines that we produce and deliver to countries around the world," he said. At an April 14 meeting, 96 per cent of shareholders backed the company's position that it cannot enforce how its equipment is used.

While Ziegler's letter was written under the letterhead of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a spokesman for that office said human rights investigators like Ziegler were "independent experts who act in their personal capacity."

- REUTERS