The council of world leaders, launched by former South African president Nelson Mandela, is sending a three-person team to help ease tensions in the troubled Middle-East.

The organisation known as The Elders is sending former US President Jimmy Carter, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and former Irish president Mary Robinson to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

Their visit will extend from April 13th to April 21st.

The group of 12 world leaders is dedicated to fostering peace and resolving global crises.

Kofi Annan has recently been on a mission to Kenya, where he was successful in mediating a power-sharing agreement in the country's disputed presidential election.

At a press conference, Mr Annan expressed the opinion that only persistence in the Middle-East process will make peace possible.

He said he was "acutely sensitive to the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in the mind of many in the Middle-East."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chairs The Elders, appealed to the Israelis and Palestinians to stop their violent cycle and said he vehemently condemned the deaths of civilians in the recent Israeli offensive on Gaza.

Tutu also said he condemned unequivocally “the dastardly attack Thursday by a Palestinian gunman on the Jewish seminary in Jerusalem."

He said: "Peace will not come from the barrel of a gun, as we learned in South Africa. Peace will only come when the inexorable cycle of reprisal provoking counter reprisal ends. When the inalienable rights of all, Israeli and Palestinian, are recognized and respected."