UN committee calls special Mideast meeting

The UN Human Rights Commission says it will hold a special meeting on the violence in the Middle East tomorrow.

The UN Human Rights Commission says it will hold a special meeting on the violence in the Middle East tomorrow.

"There is a position to hold a special sitting in response to the High Commissioner's statement on the human rights situation in the Palestinian occupied territories," the commission chairman Mr Krzysztof Jakubowski said in Geneva.

Diplomats said the potential format of the proposed "visiting mission" was still uncertain.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, had said it should imitate similar field missions established by the UN Security Council elsewhere and report back to the Commission before it ends on April 26th.

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Earlier this week, Mrs Robinson called on the commission to urgently send a "visiting mission" to the region. She said it could not stand by while human rights abuses escalated in the Middle East.

Mrs Robinson also repeated support for sending international observers to the occupied territories.

AFP