HR/CN/974

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS TO BEGIN SPECIAL SESSION ON EAST TIMOR 23 SEPTEMBER

The Commission on Human Rights will hold a special session on the situation in East Timor starting on Thursday, 23 September 1999.

The decision to hold the special session, the fourth in the Commission�s history, is the result of consultations held among Commission members following a request from Portugal dated 9 September 1999. Members voted last Thursday 27 in favour to five against, with four abstentions, to hold the special session. However, a question arose regarding the timeliness of the vote of one member. Today, the Commission voted 28 in favour, with 15 against and two non-committal responses to accept the vote in question.

The Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights has now asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to advise Member States that the first meeting of the special session will be held on Thursday, 23 September 1999, at 3 p.m. in room XVII of the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

In the last decade the Commission, which normally meets in the spring in Geneva, has held three special sessions: in 1992 and 1993 on the situation in the former Yugoslavia and in 1994 on the situation in Rwanda.

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United Nations