Iran to hold Palestine conference, Israel "war crimes" panels

Tehran  - Iran is to hold an international conference on Palestine aimed at exposing Israeli's alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip, Fars news agency reported on Tuesday.

"Three panels at the Palestine conference will be allocated to international obligations to follow up [Israeli] war crimes and violation of human rights," Iran's prosecutor general, Ghorban-Ali Dorri-Najafabadi, said.

The Palestine conference will be inaugurated Wednesday by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and attended by officials from Islamic and non-Islamic countries. No further details have yet been given about the participants.

Fars had earlier reported that the prosecutor general's office had asked Interpol to issue arrest warrants for 34 top Israeli political officials and 114 military commanders, including outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, on charges of war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Interpol denied having received any such request from Iran or any of its 187 member countries.

The prosecutor general said he considered the donor conference in Egypt for the war-shattered Gaza Strip hypocritical because it was held by countries which supported "the Zionist regime's [Israel's] crimes" and in a country [Egypt] which "did not even open its borders to the people of Gaza."

Tehran does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state and supports Gaza's ruling Islamist militant group Hamas. The conference in Tehran is aimed at once again condemning the three-week Israeli military operation in December and January in Gaza. (dpa)

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