(Adds quotes from report) By Adam Entous JERUSALEM, March 14 (Reuters) - A report by a team of U.N. experts calls on Israel to halt excavations near Jerusalem's most sacred Islamic site and proceed only under international supervision, officials said on Wednesday. Israel's archaeological excavations, taking place 50 metres (165 feet) from a religious compound known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, have sparked protests across the Muslim world. The Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which sent experts to the site last month, was expected to issue its report publicly as early as Wednesday. "While recognising that the archaeological works under way are being carried out according to professional standards, the mission expressed its concern regarding the lack of a clear work plan setting the limits of the activity, thereby opening the possibility of extensive and unnecessary excavations," the UNESCO report states, according to officials with access to the findings. The UNESCO report calls on Israel to suspend the project and draw up a new work plan in consultation with Jordanian authorities and the Waqf, a body that oversees Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Israeli archaeologists began excavations at the site on Feb. 7 to salvage artefacts before planned construction of a walkway leading up to the complex, where the two biblical Jewish Temples once stood. "The government of Israel should be asked to stop immediately the archaeological excavations given that the excavations that have been undertaken were deemed to be sufficient for the purpose of assessing the structural conditions of the pathway," the UNESCO report states, according to the officials. If excavations proceed, UNESCO concluded, they should be conducted under international supervision. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the UNESCO report "shows clearly that the Israeli restoration work is totally benign". Regev said Israeli officials had started a process to "reengage with the relevant parties in an effort to ally concerns" but he stopped short of saying whether Israel would call off the excavations. UNESCO officials had not immediate comment. Israel says the dig will do no harm to the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques on the plaza, which overlooks Judaism's Western Wall. Israel's Antiquities Authority placed Internet cameras at the site and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has brushed aside any fears the dig would harm the Muslim holy sites. The excavations touched off violent Muslim protests in Arab East Jerusalem, which includes the walled Old City where the compound is located. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, a move not recognised internationally. It considers all of Jerusalem its "eternal and indivisible capital". Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of the state they aspire to establish in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
