PRESS BRIEFING ON GUATEMALA

10 May 1996

Press Briefing

19960510 FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY

The Secretary-General had asked him to address correspondents on a 39- page agreement on economic, social and agrarian aspects of the Guatemalan peace process signed on Monday in Mexico City, the Under-Secretary-General for the Department of Political Affairs, Marrack Goulding, said at yesterday's briefing. The agreement had been signed between the Government of Guatemala and the Union Revolucionaria National Guatemalteca (URNG) and was the sixth in a series that began in January 1994.

He said the first agreement, called the Framework Agreement, had set out the agenda and a perhaps optimistic timetable for the negotiation of a comprehensive settlement of the 35-year old armed confrontation in Guatemala. That had been followed in March 1994 by the signature of an agreement on human rights in which the Government and the URNG undertook a lot of commitments on protecting human rights. It also provided for institution-building in the human rights field, which was part of the mandate of the United Nations Human Rights Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA). The MINUGUA was also to verify the compliance of the parties with the human rights agreement and to help establish Guatemalan human rights organizations. Part of the concept was the gradual transfer of the verification responsibility from the United Nations mission to Guatemala's own institutions.

The third agreement in the peace process had been signed in June 1994, he said. That agreement was about the resettlement of the uprooted people, either refugees or internally displaced due to the armed conflict. Also signed in June 1994 was an agreement on the establishment of a body called the clarification commission. It was established to investigate incidents which had caused particular human suffering during the course of the conflict. Following that, in March 1995, a landmark agreement was signed, "which had implications not only for Guatemala, but for many other countries in the world, especially in Latin America. It was an agreement on the identity and rights of indigenous peoples", he said.

The recent agreement on economic, social and agrarian aspects signed in May followed the prior agreements, he said. All the agreements formed part of a comprehensive settlement of the conflict. The next stage would be a cluster of agreements relating to military issues, which would include agreements on strengthening civil power and the role of the Army in a democratic society; on reincorporation of fighters of the URNG in civil society; and on a definitive cease-fire. At present a de facto cease-fire existed which had to be made formal and definitive. Stating that the de facto cease-fire was a common phenomenon in such situations, Mr. Goulding said, "if you have a negotiation of this kind between a government and an opposition which has taken up arms,

the opposition does not like to sign on the line for a definitive cease-fire until agreement has been reached on various social and economic issues which led to the conflict in the first place".

The final stage in the negotiation would be a timetable for the implementation and the verification of the whole package of agreements, he said. At that point, a ceremony "with the great and the good present" would be organized for the signing of the agreement and peace would come into effect. Some of the existing agreements were already being implemented, however. The human rights agreement was being implemented by MINUGUA. A good deal of preparatory work had been done on the resettlement agreement but it would not be implemented until the whole package was complete. Much of the indigenous rights agreement was already in implementation because very many of the indigenous rights fell within human rights and those were being implemented by MINUGUA.

The President of the Republic of Guatemala had mentioned 15 September, "that being Guatemala's national day", as a desirable target date for the signing of the agreement, Mr. Goulding said, adding "I hope that we can achieve that, though I think that it may be a little bit ambitious".

As he had stated in Mexico City, the process had seemed irreversible. There was going to be peace in Guatemala and the United Nations would have played a large part in helping the people and Government of Guatemala and the URNG achieve that result, he said.

The ceremony in Mexico City, held in the Foreign Ministry and co-chaired by the Mexican Foreign Minister and Mr. Goulding, had attracted a host of leading personalities from all sectors of society in Guatemala. An important number from countries which were the friends of the Guatemalan peace process had also attended. The United States had been represented by the Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, who had been particularly complimentary about the work that the United Nations was doing in Guatemala.

"The course has been set fair. I think this kind of slow patient negotiation, a very thorough negotiation, is something the United Nations is rather good at. It does take time, but as we have found in other contexts, patient and careful negotiation may turn out to be more implementable than the results of something which was done in a great rush", he said.

Responding to a question as to why the talks were still being held in Mexico City, Mr. Goulding said the Mexican Government had made a very important contribution to the whole process by acting as host for the talks, though one or two rounds had taken place elsewhere, notably in Norway. The leadership of the URNG could not, at present, go back to Guatemala. They were based in Mexico and it had been practical to hold the talks there.

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The framework of the talks was such that the entire package had to be negotiated, including the formal commitment by the URNG to lay down arms, before it could be said that peace had been restored, and that provisions adopted during the long confrontation had ceased to be in effect, enabling the URNG to go back safely without being charged in the courts, Mr. Goulding added.

In answer to a question about how far the United Nations was from initiating a similar process in Burundi, he said " a very long way, I am afraid. There is an agreement in Burundi -- a Convention of Governments. However, it is not an agreement that is working very well; it has not made it possible to control violence in Burundi. On the contrary, there has been a very considerable increase in violence and that continues. In Burundi, we would very much like to have an agreement of the kind we are negotiating in Guatemala. Such an agreement would make it possible, as the Secretary-General said in his report, to think of a peace-keeping operation in Burundi. But the conditions do not exist at present".

Answering a question on whether he saw any outside forces in Burundi, Mr. Goulding said that there was a perception in both Burundi and Rwanda that cross-border destabilization was taking place, but "we are not in a position to say whether or not that perception is accurate".

A correspondent wanted to know who would replace Leonardo Franco, the Director of the United Nations Human Rights Verification Mission in Guatemala. "That will be announced, I hope, tomorrow", he replied, adding that it had always been envisaged that Mr. Franco would leave and go back to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in May of 1996, so there was nothing startling about the fact that he was going. The Secretary-General had approved a candidate to replace him and the parties had been consulted, the President of the General Assembly would be informed today and the announcement would be made tomorrow by the Spokesman. Responding further to a query about the name of the candidate, he said "I don't want to say anything about names at this stage, we are very correct in these matters".

Another correspondent said that he had been informed that an extension of the mandate in Haiti was necessary. How long did Mr. Goulding think such a situation would persist? "You can never answer that question because you have a situation where there is conflict of one kind or another and an agreement is then negotiated to bring an end to that conflict. A peace-keeping force is deployed and if everything goes very well, the peace-keeping force completes its mandate and goes away and life proceeds in a normal way. However, it is not always like that. You can have a process of transition, a gradual return from an emergency situation to a normal situation where the activities of the United Nations are mainly in the social, economic and development sphere and the standard procedures for the resident coordinator of the United Nations for

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operational activities for development and humanitarian affairs is all you need", he said.

However, the process of transition was currently ongoing in Haiti, as it was in El Salvador where a big agreement had been negotiated, he continued. The agreement, though, had not yet been completely implemented and there was a need to have a political presence, although at a diminishing scale, both to verify implementation of the agreement and to use good offices if the parties to the agreement found themselves arguing about what it actually meant or how it ought to be implemented. The question of transition from peace-keeping to normality had recently attracted a lot of attention among governments and in academic circles. But there was no universally applicable formula and each situation demanded its own special design.

On Guatemala, a correspondent asked Mr. Goulding how he would describe the status of the Army in a democratic society. Was there going to be a reduction? Mr. Goulding said he could not predict. It was not necessary to think in numerical terms about the reduction or purging of the armed forces. A large part of the agreement on social, economic and agrarian aspects, for instance, was a statement of principles which the Government commits itself to respect in carrying out its work. It contained a lot of admirable language about participation, consultation and the principles of social development adopted by the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen. The agreement on the role of the army in a democratic society would be somewhat similar.

The economic and social agreement also contained specific undertakings, he said. The Government had, for instance, committed itself to increase tax revenue, expressed in terms of gross domestic product, by 50 per cent by the year 2000. It had committed itself to increasing social expenditure on health, education etc. by a similar proportion by the year 2000. It was those undertakings that provided the basis for the overall package in which the armed confrontation would come to a definitive end and URNG would lay down its arms and would be reintegrated into civil society.

Responding to a question on whether there was a danger of a coup by the army, Mr. Goulding said "Its the kind of forecast one does not like to be asked to make. But I don't think there is any risk of that. As I said, all sections of Guatemala society were represented at the ceremony on Monday. I think President Arzu has shown remarkable statesmanship in building this consensus in Guatemala in favour of the peace process.

Were there any large seizures of land in the country? a correspondent asked. There had been some seizures, but not on a large scale, he said. It was something the human rights people in MINUGUA had been concerned with. They had been trying to ensure that such seizures did not happen and that if they did happen, the problem was resolved in a non-violent way. One other

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consequence of the signature on Monday had been that the URNG, with immediate effect, suspended the levy of "war tax" on landowners in the conflict areas.

Responding to a question about the effect of the economic embargo in Haiti on privatization in that country, Mr. Goulding said "I think it is a matter of national sovereignty. The sovereign Government and sovereign Parliament of Haiti will take such decisions as seem to them to be right on issues like privatization".

Inviting Mr. Goulding to provide a nugget for the student journalists who were attending the briefing, a correspondent asked if Mr. Goulding thought that the Secretary-General's handling of the van Kappen report had jeopardized his future re-election chances with the United Nations. "Even the noble ideal of education won't get me to answer that one", he responded.

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