Ban backs Wiesenthal Center's call for UN session on terror

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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon supports a General Assembly special session on suicide terror which he calls an unacceptable political weapon, the UN said on Thursday.

Ban told leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, one of the largest Jewish rights organizations who called for the special session, that he would personally present the initiative to General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

"The time has come to place suicide terror at the top of the international agenda," Rabbi Marvin Hier, the center's founder and dean, said in a statement Wednesday. "This scourge is only going to get worse, and the world must act before it is too late." Hier led a delegation from the center that met the UN chief on Tuesday to discuss a special session of the UN General Assembly and express serious concern about next year's follow-up to the 2001 UN World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa.

After the December 27 suicide bombing and gun attack that killed former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the Wiesenthal Center launched an online petition drive calling for the secretary-general to support a special session on suicide terror.

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