Israel said it was "satisfied" Friday with a status report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, detailing what it and the Palestians had done so far to implement a report on last winter's deadly and destructive Gaza war, DPA reported.
The UN Human Rights Council report, authored by South African judge Richard Goldstone, accused both Israel and the radical Islamist Hamas movement of having committed war crimes.
The General Assembly adopted the report last November and gave Israel and Hamas three months to start serious probes into the allegations raised in the Goldstone report.
That deadline ended Friday and Ban's office was scheduled later in the afternoon to present a written report to General Assembly President Ali Abdussalam Treki, briefing him on the progress the Israelis and Palestinians had made to investigate the allegations.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority had submitted documents of their own last week in which they briefed Ban on their work.
Ban's status report to the General Assembly "reflects in a truthful manner the Israeli document" handed to him, Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palmor said.
"This Israeli document fully expresses Israel's commitment to conduct independent and credible investigations that live up to the standards of international law," he said in a statement.
Palmor insisted that Israel during its three-week offensive had respected international norms "despite the difficult fighting conditions" opposite Hamas militants. Israel's first duty was "to protect the well-being and security of its citizens," he said.
Israel was apparently given an advance copy of Ban's report, before formal delivery to the General Assembly later in the afternoon.
Ban's spokesman, Martin Nesirky, said in New York Thursday that the content of the secretary-general's report would only be made public after it was distributed to UN member states.
According to Israel Radio, Ban acknowledges in his report that Israel in the document it submitted to him thoroughly addressed all of the incidents described in the Goldstone report.
But, according to the radio report, he also writes that it is "too early" to determine whether Israel - and Hamas - had launched probes which answer to the standards set by the UN.
Israel has so far had its own military investigate the allegations made against it. It has not set up a government-appointed commission of inquiry, independent of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), as demanded by the Goldstone report.
Israel would now be looking at how Ban's evaluation would be received by UN member states, before making its final decision on whether it would establish such an independent commission of inquiry.
It has rejected the Goldstone report as "biased" and "prejudged."
Hamas, for its part, is said to have submitted a report to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, but it was unclear how that report would be considered, because the international body deals only with the Palestinian Authority.
Israel launched its offensive of December 27 - January 18 last year in response to near-daily rocket and mortar attacks from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip at its southern towns and villages.
Some 1,400 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed in its massive shelling from the air, sea and ground of Hamas targets in the densely-populated strip.
The Goldstone report accuses Israel, among others, of having taken insufficient steps to avoid civilians deaths, and also to prevent hitting UN and other humanitarian facilities. It also said that Israel's use of white phosphorus smoke screens in densely populated areas was illegal, as were Hamas' rocket attacks at Israeli civilian population centres.
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