Annan asks UN members for Holocaust commemoration

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has begun to poll UN General Assembly members in an effort to convene a special session to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, UN officials said.

Soviet Red Army troops freed the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on January 27, 1945. The 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is to be observed in 2005 as Holocaust Memorial Day.

"The secretary-general feels this would be an important event and awaits the responses," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

A majority of the 191-member assembly will have to approve the January session, requested by the United States and supported by Russia, France, Hungary, Canada and the Netherlands, representing the 25-member European Union as well as other nations.

US Ambassador John Danforth, in a December 10 letter to Mr Annan, said the General Assembly should convene three days before the anniversary to avoid conflicting commemorations in Auschwitz.

US Congressman Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, visiting Mr Annan, said Arab nations had raised objections. However, Yahya Mahmassani, the Arab League's UN ambassador, told Reuters he was unaware of any opposition.

"I am appalled by what I understand is the opposition of some (Arab) countries to this session, which reflects a degree of a historical and mindless venom which is difficult to justify in the international arena," Mr Lantos told reporters, without naming any nation.

The secretary-general said he was determined to do everything in his power to proceed with such a session," he added.

"I feel very deeply and strongly about the importance of a special session," said Mr Lantos, the only holocaust survivor in the US Congress.

Mr Lantos survived by serving as a 15-year old messenger for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi destruction near the end of World War II. Mr Wallenberg is the uncle of Nane Annan, the wife of the secretary-general.

Six million Jews were exterminated in the concentration camps and millions of others - including Poles, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners and Gypsies - were killed, imprisoned or used as slave labour.

A session on the Holocaust would mark a change for the General Assembly, which sets aside several days a year for resolutions on the rights of Palestinians and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.