STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Warning massacres like those carried out in Rwanda and Bosnia could happen again, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday proposed an international committee to help prevent genocide.
Annan made the proposal at the opening of a three-day conference in Stockholm on preventing genocide.
More than a half a million people were slaughtered during the 1994 war in Rwanda. A year later in Bosnia, some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, during the Balkan wars.
"I long for the day when we can say with confidence that, confronted with a new Rwanda or new Srebrenica, the world would respond effectively, and in good time," Annan said. "But let us not delude ourselves. That day has yet to come."
Annan suggested forming a U.N. committee on preventing genocide and having a "special rapporteur" who would report directly to the Security Council to monitor "massive and systematic violations of human rights and threats to international peace and security."
Several delegates welcomed the idea, including Sweden's Prime Minister Goeran Persson and Latvia's President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who said "there have been many failures when it comes to preventing genocide during the last years."
The event is the first major intergovernmental conference on the issue since the United Nations adopted its Convention against Genocide in 1948. Security was tight, with 1,500 police officers patrolling the area.
The conference is the final one in a series of annual conventions called the Stockholm International Forum, which began with a conference on the Holocaust in 2000.
Organizers said they hoped delegates would sign a declaration with commitments from 60 countries to improve efforts to prevent genocide.
Participants include the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana; former chief U.N. weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Rolf Ekeus; International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, and Nobel Peace Prize winners Bernard Kouchner and Elie Wiesel.
Israel downgraded its representation after a Stockholm museum refused to remove a display showing a picture of an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber from an exhibit linked to the conference. Israel said the piece glorified suicide bombers.
The Israeli-born artist who created the installation, Dror Feiler, was among hundreds who protested Monday against Israel's presence at the event.
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