Libya will chair a U.N. Human Rights Council session planning a follow-up to the 2001 Durban anti-racism conference, a U.N. watchdog said. The Durban, South Africa devolved into an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic free-for-all, according to Jewish groups present and become a model for U.N. dysfunction. U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog, reported Friday that Libya will chair a planning meeting in Geneva later this month for the 2009 follow-up conference. Saudi Arabia and Iran will also be on the 15-member planning panel, U.N. Watch said. Libya’s 2003 chairmanship of the Council’s predecessor, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, was widely derided because of Libya’s dismal human rights record and helped persuade the U.N. leadership to dismantle the commission and replace it with the Council, which is nominally more accountable to the United Nations.
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