NAM Palestine committee meeting to be held in Tehran

The Iranian capital city of Tehran will host a meeting of the Palestine Committee of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) next week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman says.

Marziyeh Afkham told reporters on Sunday that NAM’s Palestine Committee member states had previously met at the UN headquarters in New York on the initiative of the Islamic Republic with Iran’s Permanent Mission to the international body presiding over the meeting.

“A one-day meeting of the Palestine Committee will be held in Tehran next week chaired by Iranian Foreign Minister [Mohammad Javad Zarif] and attended by foreign ministers of the committee’s member states and also other active members of the [NAM] movement to study the latest situation in Gaza, find ways to resolve the crisis and reduce the human suffering of the innocent people of Gaza,” she said.
Over the past 10 days, emergency and intensive meetings were convened in New York on how to apply political capacity of NAM members countries and the upcoming Palestine Committee meeting will be held in the same framework, Afkham said.

Countries such as Algeria, Bangladesh, Cuba, Egypt, India, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Malaysia are members of NAM’s Palestine Committee.

The development comes as Israeli warplanes and tanks have been pounding numerous sites inside the besieged Gaza Strip and killing innocent residents of the impoverished Palestinian enclave since July 8.

The Palestinian death toll from 20 days of aerial and ground assaults on Gaza now stands 1062, with more than 6000 people injured.