DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
19960715
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
Sylvana Foa, Spokesman for Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, began today's noon briefing by informing correspondents that the Secretary- General was back in town but "under the weather" today. "He has decided that, rather than coming to spread his flu germs or cold germs, or whatever it is that he's got, around the building, that he is going to work the phones. So he is letting his fingers do the walking and working on the phone."
The Secretary-General would, however, meet at his residence at 5 p.m. with Ambassador Abdul-Amir Al-Anbari, the head of the Iraqi delegation to the "oil-for-food" talks with the United Nations Secretariat, Ms. Foa said. Most of his appointments for today had been rescheduled for tomorrow, she added.
Ms. Foa said the Secretary-General is expected to brief the Security Council tomorrow and stop on his way out to talk to members of the media. "We intend to put super-glue on the floor in front of the stake-out, so once he gets there he can't get away."
The High Representative for the Implementation of the Peace Agreement on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Carl Bildt, had rescheduled his trip to Headquarters and would arrive on 31 July, Ms. Foa said. He was expected to see the Secretary-General and brief the Council. Meanwhile, the Council was expected to consider Mr. Bildt's report on the implementation of the Peace Agreement in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday, 17 July.
Ms. Foa then read the following statement attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General:
"Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is deeply concerned by the recent serious deterioration in the humanitarian situation in the Sudan, as a result of the unilateral and unjustified obstruction by the Government of urgently required humanitarian assistance to the affected population in southern Sudan.
"However, the Secretary-General was pleased to learn this morning that the Government of the Sudan is now permitting Operation Lifeline Sudan C-130 Hercules relief flights to resume delivery of humanitarian assistance to southern Sudan during the month of July. Continued authorization by the Government for this aircraft to deliver relief supplies in upcoming months is critical.
"The Secretary-General hopes that the Government will continue its cooperation and fully abide by the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and transparency upon which Operation Lifeline Sudan was founded in 1989, as well as adhere to its commitments to the General Assembly to assist all persons in need throughout the country." (See Press Release SG/SM/6020, issued today.)
Ms. Foa continued by stating that the Security Council had this morning extended the mandate of the United Nations Mission of Observers in Prevlaka (UNMOP) until 15 January 1997. The Mission had 28 United Nations military observers in the Prevlaka peninsula. The Council was expected, on Wednesday, 17 July, to review the Secretary-General's report on the Sudan in relation to resolution 1054 (1996). On Friday, 19 July, the Council was expected to undertake its periodic, 120-day review of sanctions against Libya, in conformity with resolution 748 (1992). The last review was held on 21 March.
Professor Han Sung-Joo, the Secretary-General's newly-appointed Special Representative for Cyprus, was at Headquarters with the Deputy Special Representative, Gustave Feissel, for consultations. They had seen the Under- Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Marrack Goulding, this morning and would be at Headquarters up to the middle of the week. "Our traps have been set throughout the building and, hopefully, we will get him in here to brief the press."
An investigating team from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia had exhumed about 60 corpses from the forest slope in Cerska, some 35 kilometres west of Srebrenica, according to the Spokesman. Evidence suggested that individuals were lined up on one side of the road and shot at from the other. Several bodies had their hands tied behind their backs, refuting Serb claims that the corpses found around Srebrenica were those of soldiers killed in battle. The digging would continue this week at a place called Nova Kasaba, where up to 2,700 victims might be buried.
Ms. Foa informed reporters that the hand grenade launched last Friday at the offices of the International Police Task Force had caused no injuries but had blown out most of the office's windows and damaged three vehicles, one of them completely. An interesting footnote was that the International Tribunal's criminal investigating team conducting the exhumations had been operating from that office, located north of Han Pijesak, where the Bosnian Serb army and General Ratko Mladic were based.
In the useful trivia for the file department, the Spokesman said that the total cost of the United Nations Peace Forces in the former Yugoslavia (UNPF), from 12 January 1992 to the end of mission in 1996, had been estimated at about $4,774 million. The cost covered the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), the United Nations Confidence Restoration Operation in Croatia (UNCRO) as well as the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) up to the end of 1995. Separate accounts had been kept for the United Nations
Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 15 July 1996
Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH), the United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) and UNPREDEP, since January. The sum largely represented the cost of UNPROFOR.
Ms. Foa then informed correspondents that the Associate Administrator for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Rafeeuddin Ahmed, would brief the media on the Human Development Report, 1996, at 11 a.m. tomorrow, 16 July, in room 226.
In response to a question as to whether she could provide some details on the report, since the embargo had been broken, Ms. Foa cited the document as stating that the rich were getting richer and the poor, poorer. The situation in about 90 countries was worse economically than 10 years ago, leading to global polarization between the haves and the have-nots. The widening gaps between rich and poor, within countries and among continents was getting bigger. The report showed that failing to put people at the centre of development puts breaks on everyone's gains. If development was not people- centred it did not work. No country could sustain high levels of economic growth without a strong foundation of human development. There were 6,000 new cases of HIV daily -- one person every 15 seconds. Ninety per cent of them were in the developing countries, setting back human development substantially.
According to the report, the assets of the world's 358 billionaires exceeded the combined annual income of countries accounting for nearly half of the world's people, she added.
Asked when the report on the assassination of the former President of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, would be published, Ms. Foa said that it was in the final stages of preparation and the publication date would be announced.
In response to a question on the situation in Liberia, she said that things were quieter in Monrovia, with the deployment all over the city by the Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG), which was searching for and collecting weapons. She said that the Secretary- General's Special Representative for Liberia, Anthony Nyakyi, was in New York and she would try to get him to speak to the media.
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