BEIRUT, Lebanon - Three Lebanese cabinet ministers visited the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps outside the capital Friday, the first ever such occasion, an AFP correspondent reported.

Education Minister Khaled Kabbani, who headed the group, expressed outrage about the living conditions in the camps.

"What we saw in this camp is a true humanitarian drama that must shake the international consciousness," the minister said.

"It is unthinkable that this endures and that the Palestinians continue in these living conditions which come close to an attack on human dignity and human rights."

Kabbani said they delegation had not raised the issue of UN demands for people living in Palestinian refugee camps to disarm.

"The question of Palestinian disarmament was not raised during the visit, which concentrated on the humanitarian, civil and political rights of the residents," he said.

Kabbani was accompanied by Social Affairs Minister Nayla Moawad and Health Minister Mohammed Khalifeh.

As they left, the ministers placed a wreath of flowers at the cemetery where the victims of a 1982 massacre of camp residents by Israeli-backed Christian militiamen are buried.

There are believed to be 380,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon, many of them in dire conditions in 12 refugee camps.

A September 2004 UN Security Council resolution calls on Lebanon to assert sovereignty on all its territory and disarm all militias, including armed Palestinian factions and the armed wing of Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.

Leaders from across the political and religious spectrum have been meeting in Beirut to solve such contentious issues as the presence of armed Palestinians outside refugee camps.

Parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri said Tuesday that participants in the talks supported disarmament within six months and "the state re-establishing its authority on all Lebanese territory".

Pro-Syrian Palestinians in the camps have called for dialogue over their civil and political rights before there is any discussion of disarmament.

The Palestinian faction Fatah announced on Sunday it would voluntarily disarm its members in the camps.

Most Palestinians living in Lebanon are denied basic civil rights, including Lebanese citizenship, the right to work in many professions and to own property.

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