The IPC General Assembly in Bahrain's capital Manama last month voted to partially suspend Russia and Belarus' National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) for failing to fulfil membership obligations, but against a full suspension.

This allows their athletes to compete under a neutral flag at next year's Paralympic Games, angering Ukraine and several of its allies.

IPC President Andrew Parsons had called on all members to respect the General Assembly's decision, but Ukraine's call for an EPC Extraordinary General Assembly to discuss the issue was backed by at least 10 countries.

Latvia, one of the most vocal opponents to Russia and Belarus' participation in international sport during the ongoing war in Ukraine, has claimed it has been granted hosting rights for such a gathering in late February or early March next year to discuss European nations' stance.

Latvian Paralympic Committee President Daiga Dadzīte claimed its proposal to stage the Extraordinary General Assembly had received backing from the EPC and its member nations.

"Although it might seem that Latvia is a small country, in the world Paralympic sports arena Latvia could be ranked among the great countries - not only in terms of the high success achieved by our Para athletes, but also in matters of support for Ukraine," Dadzīte commented.

"Thanks to the initiative of the Latvian Paralympic Committee, which was joined by 13 other European countries at our request, the European Paralympic Committee decided to organise an Extraordinary General Assembly.

"We proposed Latvia as a potential candidate country for hosting this Assembly, and our proposal received support not only from the European umbrella organisation itself, but also from other European colleagues."

Dadzīte admitted there is no funding in place to organise the Extraordinary General Assembly at this stage, but revealed discussions were ongoing with the Ministry of Education and Science.

The National Paralympic Committee of Ukraine said "together with the European Paralympic community, [it] continues to fight for the ideals of peace, humanism, and democracy of the world Paralympic Movement".

The decision on Russian and Belarusian athletes' participation at next year's Paralympics is the responsibility of the IPC, so an EPC Extraordinary General Assembly could not overturn last month's ruling, but a collective European stance could put pressure on the global governing body.

insidethegames has asked the IPC for a comment.

Russian and Belarusian athletes were initially due to compete as neutrals at last year's Winter Paralympics in Beijing, before the IPC reversed its stance on the eve of the Opening Ceremony after multiple nations had threatened a boycott.

The IPC then suspended the Russian Paralympic Committee and NPC of Belarus at last year's Extraordinary General Assembly in Germany's capital Berlin, but an appeal was upheld on a "technicality" earlier this year which led to the matter returning to the General Assembly in Manama.

Russia was previously banned from Paralympics at Rio 2016 because of the state-sponsored doping scandal, a decision which contrasted with the International Olympic Committee allowing each sport to make its own decision on their participation at the Olympics.