No doubt there will be a lot of deconstruction of the decision by Secretary General Annan to abandon the scheme to try to get a “fact-finding” mission into the Jenin refugee camp. It may be that his decision was simply a reaction to Prime Minister Sharon’s determination to stand on principle. Or it may be a reaction to the news that the Palestinian Arabs themselves have reported that the deaths on their side were but a tiny fraction, some 56, of the hundreds they’d originally been claiming were killed in the fighting there. Our own line of inquiry, however, would center on the growing recognition that the individual heading the call for the probe is a highly suspect figure with an animus to the Jewish state that is in and of itself disqualifying.

We speak of Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East, who has been pushing for the investigation into the Jenin “massacre.” It turns out that he has been caught up in a scandal in recent weeks involving money he took from the Peres Center for Peace (which was founded by Shimon Peres), where he sits on the board of governors, and money that Norway in turn gave to the Center. The Israeli weekend newspaper Makor Rishon discovered that Mr. Larsen and his wife, Mona Juul, received in 1999 a $100,000 “prize” from the Peres Center. The money was split evenly by Mr. Larsen and his wife, who is Norway’s ambassador to Israel. Neither he nor his wife reported the gift to the Norwegian government, leading to a swift decision announced yesterday by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry to reprimand Ms. Juul. Bear in mind that Mr. Larsen is the man who, who in the wake of the Jenin raid, pronounced that that “Israel has lost all moral ground in the conflict.”

Mr. Larsen is likely to escape reprimand for his misconduct, since he is not an employee of the Norwegian government, and the United Nations apparently has no intention of firing him. However, Mr. Larsen’s conduct and his recent remarks about Jenin have made it clear to Israel’s leadership that he cannot be trusted. Mr. Sharon has reportedly considered declaring Mr. Larsen persona non grata and expelling him from the country. It would be a fitting denouement to the career of a man who participated in the groundwork that led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords and who considers Yasser Arafat a personal friend, telling the Jerusalem Post in March of 1995, “Arafat and I talk about everything, not just politics and economics. We discuss life, food and love.”

Mr. Peres has been defending Mr. Larsen, who, Israel’s press has been intimating, may have played a role in gaining the inclusion of Mr. Peres in the Nobel Prize that was given to Prime Minister Rabin and Mr. Arafat. Secretary General Annan has also been defending Norwegian, issuing a statement Sunday night praising his “objectivity, professionalism, and compassion.” But we can’t help thinking that the more these statesmen look at the situation, the less credible Mr. Larsen himself seemed as the person to send into a situation as fraught as Jenin. Our guess is that, while no one wants to admit it, the true character of Mr. Larsen and his “fact-finding” commission were quickly becoming so obvious that the United Nations had to abandon its attempt to establish a kangaroo court.