Geneva  - Participating in the opening of the tenth session of the Human Rights Council on Monday, the United Nation's top rights expert said she supported an upcoming anti-racism conference, despite anti-Semitic elements that plagued the previous one.

Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged "governments and all other stakeholders to actively participate in this review process" and that attacks against it were "unwarranted."

Lahore, Mar 2 : The kidnappers of United Nations' official John Solecki have set a four-day deadline for the Pakistan Government to meet their demands.

The Balochistan Liberation United Front, the group that claimed responsibility for the abduction, have sent a letter to a news agency in Quetta warning that Solecki would be killed if their demands are not met.

"If our demands are not met, then we will kill him, and state agencies will be responsible for it," the group said in the letter.

Brussels  - France defied its critics and demanded European Union support for the bloc's crisis-stricken car industry at an EU summit in Brussels on Sunday, diplomatic sources said.

The call came a day after the EU's second-largest member backed down on a bail-out plan which would have obliged producers to give preferential treatment to French factories and suppliers.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy now wants the EU as a whole to take steps to keep the bloc's auto producers afloat, diplomatic sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Beirut  - The head of Lebanon's majority in parliament, Saad Hariri, said Sunday the launch of the Special Tribunal into the assassination of his father Rafik Hariri was achieved by the Lebanese people's will.

Hariri, in a statement made during a visit to Abu Dhabi, said the the Lebanese people "expressed solidarity with the court, refused to be intimidated by threats, helped ending Syrian guardianship of Lebanon and liberated territories from Israeli occupation."

The Hague  - The international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri four years ago was formally constituted in The Hague Sunday.

The court, constituted under a United Nations mandate, is to probe among other things allegations that Syria was behind the killing of Hariri in a massive Beirut bomb blast on 14 February 2005.

Syria has repeatedly denied allegations of involvement in the Hariri attack, in which 22 other people were also killed.

Court registrar Robin Vincent told the opening that the tribunal was in the first place not so much for the United Nations or for the international community as "for Lebanon".

The Hague  - The international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri four years ago was formally constituted in The Hague Sunday.

The court, constituted under a United Nations mandate, is to probe among other things allegations that Syria was behind the killing of Hariri in a massive Beirut bomb blast on 14 February 2005.

Syria has repeatedly denied allegations of involvement in the attack, in which 22 other people were also killed.