DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
19960402
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
Ahmad Fawzi, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General, began today's noon briefing by informing correspondents that the Secretary-General had arrived in Tokyo today, after concluding his five-day visit to the Republic of Korea. Tomorrow, he would begin his official visit to Japan and would meet with the Japanese Prime Minister, Ryutaro Hashimato, and other members of his cabinet, including the Foreign Minister, Yukihiko Ikeda. More information would be available tomorrow. He informed correspondents that his briefing would be followed by the presentation by Prvoslav Davinic, Director of the Centre for Disarmament Affairs, and a Manager of the Trust Fund for confidence-building and disarmament in Central Africa.
Another permanent member of the Security Council had made a substantial payment today, Mr. Fawzi announced. The United Kingdom, which had already paid around $20 million this year, made another payment amounting to $37,370,371, thus, completing the payment of its assessment in full. In total, the United Kingdom had now paid $57,811,371 to the United Nations regular budget. Mr. Fawzi pointed out that the United Kingdom was the third permanent member of the Council to fulfil its treaty obligations in full this year, after France and the Russian Federation.
The Security Council was meeting to review its programme of work for the month of April, Mr. Fawzi said. Iqbal Riza, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Sarajevo and Coordinator of United Nations activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, would be present at tomorrow's noon briefing. Carl Bildt, the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, would brief the press that day at 5 p.m. Kofi Annan, Under- Secretary-General for Peace-keeping Operations, would be present at Thursday's noon briefing.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sent a letter to the Secretary-General in an effort to call the attention of the Security Council and the General Assembly to the situation in the Middle East, which resulted in the closure of the West Bank and Gaza, Mr. Fawzi said. The Secretary-General had forwarded the letter to the Council and to the General Assembly.
A day before Mr. Arafat's letter was received, the Secretary-General had written to Shimon Peres, the Israeli Prime Minister, regarding the critical situation in Gaza and the West Bank, due to the continued closure of those territories, Mr. Fawzi continued. The letter, dated 28 March, also said that the Secretary-General had been briefed on the severity of the situation by Terje Roed Larsen, Special Coordinator in the occupied territories, and by
Peter Hansen, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The Secretary-General appealed to Mr. Peres, in view of the serious concerns of the international community that the continued closure could have an adverse impact on the peace process, to consider lifting the closure of Gaza and the West Bank, at least as a gradual process, and to allow greater mobility of persons and goods, which would facilitate the normal provision of UNRWA services to the Palestinian refugees and help alleviate the hardship of the Palestinian people.
The Secretary-General's report on human rights in Chechnya was out today at the United Nations Office at Geneva; a limited number of copies were available in the Spokesman's Office.
The Deputy Spokesman then called correspondents' attention to some press reports published today which seemed to indicate that the Secretary-General had requested a cutdown in two United Nations missions, specifically the International Civilian Mission to Haiti (MICIVIH) and the United Nations Human Rights Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA). "At no time did the Secretary-General advocate cutting these missions", Mr. Fawzi underlined. "MICIVIH and MINUGUA are two of the most successful overseas missions in the United Nations portfolio. To say that the Secretary-General threatened to cut those two missions, or any others, is inaccurate, to say the least."
The Secretary-General wrote a letter to the President of the General Assembly some time ago in which he very explicitly said that it was impossible to finance the missions unless he was either given the necessary resources or specifically told which programmes were to be cut, Mr. Fawzi said. "Nowhere did he say, 'I am going to cut these missions'. On the contrary. The Secretary-General has been fighting to keep these programmes alive", Mr. Fawzi stressed.
The financial measures being taken by the Secretary-General had been described yesterday by Joseph Connor, Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management, as "a milestone in the history of the United Nations". Mr. Fawzi commented that he hoped those measures "would not become a milestone around the neck of this Organization that would bring it to its knees", adding "we need these missions and we need to inject them with fresh blood, resuscitate them and keep them alive".
Mr. Fawzi went on to say that a revised report of the Secretary-General on the International Police Task Force(IPTF)/United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) would be available this afternoon as document S/1996/210. The report had been revised for technical reasons. In the document, the Secretary-General stressed that the performance of UNMIBH, as well as all other United Nations missions in the former Yugoslavia, depended upon the adequate provision of financial resources. He also referred to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 2 April 1996
indicating that it had developed an operational plan to support the return of more than 2 million refugees and displaced persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other agencies' activities, such as those of the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), were also referred to.
In his conclusions, the Secretary-General underlined that "besides the unique difficulties faced in Sarajevo, the larger problem of displaced persons and refugees persists throughout the former Yugoslavia. The principle of the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes or place of their choice must not apply only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in Croatia, including Eastern Slavonia and in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), as must the principle of freedom of movement. The problems of displacement are interrelated, and so are the solutions", Mr. Fawzi stated.
Finally, the Secretary-General's report stressed that the mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina currently faced financial uncertainties, as well as uncertainties relating to the dilemma that will arise if the International Implementation Force of the Dayton Accords (IFOR) was withdrawn, as anticipated, at the end of the year. He recalls his view that the Task Force's mandate should be coterminous with IFOR's, the report said. Mr. Fawzi added that the Secretary-General underlined it would be unrealistic to envisage a civilian police operation continuing its work without the framework of security provided by the presence of a credible international military force.
Responding to a question about the United Nations mission in the Kashmir region, in the context of the possibility of cutting the size of United Nations missions, Mr. Fawzi said that the Secretary-General continued to support the mission and to offer his good offices to the countries involved, if they wished to make use of them. The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jose Ayala Lasso, had issued a statement today regarding a recent killing in that region, Mr. Fawzi added.
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