Brussels, 27/08/2002 (Agence Europe) - In a letter sent to the President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, with a view to the meeting of the conference of presidents on 29 August, the president of the GUE/NGL Group, Francis Wurtz, calls for a debate on war crimes in Afghanistan to be added to the agenda of next week's plenary session in Strasbourg. He proposes that this debate, with declarations by the Commission and Council, should be held on Wednesday 4 September and be followed by the vote on a resolution. Mr Wurtz recalls that his Group had requested that, early summer, after the projection on 12 June of the film by British director Jamie Doran which gives damning evidence of crimes committed by the Northern Alliance in the presence of US military, that the Parliament should call for an international inquiry to be opened. The Parliament had refused to vote a resolution on this subject in July this year. On 19 August, the American magazine Newsweek devoted a substantial dossier to this matter. Its inquiry "confirms the serious suspicion of which we have had echoes. It even reveals the existence of a confidential United Nations memorandum on the same facts", writes Francis Wurtz. He adds: "Now, as it failed to take an initiative in July, the Parliament must, I believe, from its very first session after the break, call for a UN investigation into the matter".