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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, April 06, 2002
Israeli Offensive Debated by U.N. Human Rights Body
Diplomats here discussed on Friday whether to send U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson to the reoccupied Palestinian territories.
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Diplomats here discussed on Friday whether to send U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson to the reoccupied Palestinian territories.
The draft resolution, proposed by Islamic states, is being debated at a special meeting of the current U.N. Human Rights Commission session, in response to the deteriorating situation in the West Bank.
Virtually all autonomous Palestinian towns in the region have been reoccupied as a result of the
Israel
i military offensive, which was launched in response to a series of suicide bombings.
The session comes a day after Israel's staunchest ally, U.S. President George W. Bush, called on Israel to pull back its troops from the reoccupied land. That prompted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to allow the U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni to meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who is still a virtual prisoner in his compound in Ramallah.
Diplomats here said it's not clear whether the Geneva debate will have any great bearing on efforts to pull the region back from the brink of total war. But they held that the decision to send Robinson immediately to the region, and have her report back to the current session would have huge symbolism.
A similar proposal was rejected at last year's session, but Western diplomats here said it was likely that the special session would vote to dispatch Robinson to the region, despite objections from
Canada
,
Australia
and the
United States
.
The draft resolution supports a Robinson report last Tuesday, in which she called on the Commission to send a delegation to the region immediately. It asks her "to head a visiting mission that would travel immediately to the area and return expeditiously to submit its findings and recommendations to the current session of the Commission.
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