DUBAI, UAE: Saudi-run human rights watchdog said last week that it had sent a delegation to listen to the grievances of the kingdom's Shiite minority.

"A delegation from the Human Rights Commission has gone to see Shiite leaders to study their demands and complaints and then pass them on to King Abdullah," the commission's head Turki al-Sudairi told Dubai satellite television.

Sudairi, who has the rank of minister, acknowledged that, "Shiites often suffer from discrimination in the judicial field," the first senior Saudi official to do so. He pointed to the recent "refusal by a judge to accept the testimony of a Shiite."