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OIC Grapples with Afghan, Palestinian Crises
RIYADH, Dec 5 (News Agencies) - The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called on the United Nations Wednesday to investigate the killing of hundreds of prisoners at the Qala-e-Jangi prison in Afghanistan, news agencies reported.
The call came in a letter sent by OIC Secretary General Abdelwahed Belkeziz to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and released to the press Wednesday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"News has reached me about the massacre that took place recently inside the citadel of Jangi located on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan, and claimed the lives of hundreds of prisoners," the letter said.
Belkeziz said the prisoners had been promised good treatment and that they would be handed over to the United Nations and accordingly surrendered at Kunduz.
He said that despite a cloak of obscurity surrounding the deaths last week, it was condemned by Islamic countries and human rights organizations across the world as a violation of the terms of the 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of Prisoners of War (POW).
The Northern Alliance said that around 450 prisoners were killed in clashes with its fighters, who were backed by U.S. and British units, which included air power being sent in to suppress an uprising by Taliban and Arab inmates.
Mary Robinson, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called Friday for an official inquiry into the bloody suppression of the prison uprising.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said Iran backs the calls of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat for an emergency Islamic summit to discuss the wave of Israeli air strikes on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Qatar's QNA news agency reported Wednesday.
Kharazi "underscored the need to convene an extraordinary Islamic summit to examine the situation in the Palestinian territories" during a telephone conversation with his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani, QNA said.
Iran's official IRNA news agency, in its account of the conversation, said the Qatari foreign minister had expressed support for an OIC meeting, but did not say at what level it should take place, reported AFP.
"It should be held at an appropriate level", he was quoted as saying, adding that Qatar was making every effort to convene it.
Arafat had urged the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to convene a summit of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), currently chaired by Qatar, to discuss "Israel's attacks against the Palestinians."
Israel Monday launched the largest wave of air strikes against Palestinian cities since the Palestinian Authority was set up in 1994.
Arafat briefed Qatar's emir on the "Israeli aggression against the Israeli territories," QNA reported.
He called for the Qatari leader "to call an urgent Islamic summit to examine" Israeli actions, a foreign ministry spokesman told the agency.
The spokesman said Doha would immediately make contacts with the secretariat of the OIC, which is based in the Saudi city of Jeddah, and the organization's 57 members.
On Tuesday, the OIC was also called upon by the tribal elder chiefs and Islamic scholars in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province to help prevent the slaughter of Arab supporters of Osama bin Laden holed up in mountains there, a report said.
The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said Tuesday that more than 300 chiefs and scholars held a meeting to discuss the matter, and resolved to call on the OIC to intervene, as they did not want the Arab population - which also includes women and children - to be killed in their area.
Several hundred Arabs, believed to be members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, have taken refuge in the Tora Bora cave complex in the White Mountains near Afghanistan's eastern city of Jalalabad, according to a local military commander.
The commander, Haji Mohammad Zaman, told journalists in Jalalabad Tuesday that bin Laden is hiding out in the rugged, icy peaks of Tora Bora.
The chiefs and scholars, according to AIP, also wanted the Arabs to move to prevent the area from being bombed further by U.S. warplanes, causing more civilian deaths.
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