UNITED NATIONS – As President-elect Abbas and Prime Minister Sharon seek to renew dialogue and avoid confrontational rhetoric, Secretary-General Annan yesterday chose to revisit the extremely contentious issue of Israel’s security barrier.

In what Israeli U.N. ambassador, Dan Gillerman, defined as an “extremely ill-timed” announcement, Mr. Annan notified the General Assembly of his intention to establish a U.N. mechanism to register Palestinian Arab complaints about damages suffered from the barrier, which Israel is erecting to prevent terror attacks.

In a letter to the president of the General Assembly, Mr. Annan noted that last August an assembly resolution called for the establishment of such a mechanism. This was in the aftermath of an advisory opinion by the Hague based International Court of Justice, which also called on Israel to dismantle the “illegal” barrier.

Israeli diplomats said the debate has significantly transformed since last summer, most notably after the demise of Yasser Arafat, who launched a worldwide campaign against the security measure. “This is part of Arafat’s legacy,” Mr. Gillerman told The New York Sun. “As the entire world is looking at a window of opportunity,” yesterday’s announcement was “the wrong decision, at the wrong time, on the wrong issue.”

U.N. officials said they tried to delay the announcement, as they were aware of the new realities. Nevertheless, they added, they were under pressures from Palestinian Arabs.

Asked about the Israeli complaint, spokesman Stephane Dujaric told the Sun that the process of preparing the mechanism’s framework was “time consuming,” and that it involved a lot of coordination and review by U.N. legal experts. “We look forward” to cooperation from Israeli authorities, he added.

In Israel, however, the barrier is considered a successful anti-terror measure, and the opposition to it is seen as an Arab attempt to score political points. Mr. Annan is “following the cue of the U.N.’s immoral majority,” Mr. Gillerman said. “We certainly will not cooperate” on the register, he vowed.

In a separate development, Mr. Annan yesterday announced that a majority of U.N. member states agreed to convene a special General Assembly session on January 24 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

It took more than a month to get the necessary 96 votes to convene the unprecedented Holocaust memorial, in which foreign ministers from Germany, Poland, and Israel are expected to participate. Some 110 nations out of the U.N.’s 192 members now support the session.

“The United Nations was founded as the world was learning the full horror of the camps and is dedicated to doing everything in its power to protect human dignity and prevent any such horror from happening again,” Mr. Annan said in a statement.