A UN Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People will be held in Qatar next week, a UN committee announced on Wednesday.

The purpose of the seminar is among efforts to ease the social, economic and humanitarian emergencies in the Occupied Palestinian Territory stemming from the Israeli occupation, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People said in a statement.

It noted that "the role of donor countries and institutions, as well as that of other international actors is of vital importance."

"The current situation, however, is particularly troubling due to the continuing instability affecting all aspects of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," the Committee added.

The meeting, which is organizing on Monday and Tuesday in Doha of Qatari in line with recent General Assembly resolutions, will discuss the United Nations, international and regional response to the needs of the Palestinians, and will exchange views on the actions that need to be taken on the road to Palestinian economic recovery.

Invited participants include internationally renowned experts, among them Israelis and Palestinians, UN agency representatives, parliamentarians, intergovernmental organizations, the academic community and representatives of civil society.

Speakers at the opening session will also include UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Angela Kane and the Committee chairman, Paul Badji.

Meanwhile, in its latest update on the situation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that Palestinian access in and out of the Gaza Strip remains severally restricted.

According to its report, the extent of outages during the current winter is unprecedented and follows Israel's bombing of the Gaza power plant in June.

While replacement transformers arrived from Egypt in November 2006, the current capacity remains insufficient by some 30 per cent of its original output, it observed.

At the same time, OCHA also reported that throughout January to date, 53 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, including seven children, and 244 injured in Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence.

Source: Xinhua