United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed establishment of a U.N. committee on the prevention of genocide.
Mr. Annan told a conference in Stockholm he is recommending creation of a special U.N. official who would report to the Security Council on efforts to prevent genocide.
The secretary-general said he hopes for a day when the world can respond rapidly and responsibly to situations such as arose in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He referred to the deaths of at least 7,000 Muslims after Serb forces captured the enclave of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, and to the killing a million or more Tutsis and moderate Hutus by Hutu tribesmen in 1994.
He called it shameful that the international community took no timely effective action in those cases.
Organizers of the Stockholm Conference on the Prevention of Genocide say it is the first major intergovernmental conference on the subject since adoption of the U.N. Convention against Genocide in 1948.
Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.
