DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
19960717
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
Sylvana Foa, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, opened today's noon briefing by observing that the Secretary-General's schedule today was about 5,000 items long. The highlights included a meeting with Professor Nazli Choucri of the Technology and Development Programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Secretary-General would also meet with the Permanent Representative of El Salvador, and thereafter begin receiving the credentials of a whole slew of new Permanent Representatives to the United Nations. "We will have a lot of new faces tomorrow around here", she observed. She said the Secretary-General would be receiving the credentials of the new Permanent Representative of the Dominican Republic, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Spain and Sierra Leone.
In the afternoon, the Secretary-General would meet with the Permanent Representative of Yemen, Abdallah Saleh Al-Ashtal, and at about 5 p.m., address the 1996 United Nations Population Award ceremony honouring Senator Leticia Ramos Shahani and Pathfinder International. The Spokesman explained that the Award was given out by the United Nations every year to people or organizations which had made outstanding contributions to population policies and programmes. The Award included a gold medal, a diploma, and money -- $12,500. This year, the Award went to Senator Shahani, a leading advocate for population policies and programmes in the Philippines, and Pathfinder International, an American non-governmental organization that helped start and manage population programmes worldwide. There would be a reception for them later in the afternoon, she said.
Turning to the work of the Security Council, she said that today it had a briefing by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Cyprus, Han Sung-Joo. She reminded correspondents that they would also have a briefing today by Mr. Han. (The briefing notes are issued separately.)
The Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission monitoring the disarmament of Iraq, Rolf Ekeus, was briefing the Council at the time of the noon briefing, the Spokesman said. Evidently, he was talking about the latest problems relating to the work of the Special Commission in Iraq. Despite the agreement described in the joint statement by Ambassador Ekeus and Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz in late June, it had been found that Iraq had been less cooperative than it had been hoped, particularly in the last couple of days. Ambassador Ekeus was expected to tell the Security Council that the inspectors were not being given freedom of movement as had been agreed and felt it was time to bring those problems to its notice. She said there had been two instances in particular in which the Commission's
teams had been blocked -- one just delayed for a while, and one totally blocked -- at checkpoints on their way to a site for an inspection. As correspondents were aware, in the agreement, the Commission had been given unrestricted, immediate and unconditional entry to any site in Iraq. That evidently had not worked out, and Ambassador Ekeus was "a bit disappointed" in the initial test of the agreement. She expected that more would be heard from him later.
The Spokesman informed correspondents that the Secretary-General's report on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) should be issued early next week. "We have all been wondering what is the fate of UNIFIL." As correspondents knew, UNIFIL troops were based in southern Lebanon and were the ones who were in the middle of the Qana incident. The report would deal with the Force's mandate which would expire at the end of July.
Continuing, she said the Secretary-General had today transmitted the "Report of the investigation regarding the shooting down of the two US- registered private civil aircraft by Cuban military aircraft on 24 February 1996." It had been transmitted by the President of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The report had been issued as document S/1996/509 and was going to the Security Council. As correspondents knew, she said, the ICAO Council had already considered the report and on 27 June adopted a resolution which was enclosed with it. It was expected that the Security Council would consider the ICAO report next Monday.
Updating correspondents, she said the three-day official mission to Haiti led by the Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations had ended yesterday. The visit was "a purely bilateral affair" as she had told correspondents yesterday. She said that evidently there were talks on normalization of relations with Haitian President Rene Praval and other senior officials. As she had informed correspondents yesterday, the Secretary- General's Special Representative to Haiti, Enrique ter Horst, also met the Chinese delegation.
She announced that a letter from the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Antonio Cassese, addressed to the President of the Security Council, was now out as document S/1996/556. In the letter, he informed the President of the Council of the decision of the Trial Chamber in the case of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic and the subsequent issuance of arrest warrants. The warrants were being transmitted to all States, to the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) and the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR). She said the Tribunal President had informed the Council that the failure to execute the warrants that were issued on 25 July and 16 November 1995 against Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic "was wholly due to the refusal of the Republika Srpska and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) to cooperate with the Tribunal in accordance with article 29 of the Statute". He had taken the action so that the Security Council could decide upon the appropriate response.
Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 17 July 1996
The Spokesman then said, "Since we are hiding Professor Han in the backroom, if you don't have anything, I'll ask him to come in".
A correspondent then asked whether there had been a change in the United Nations designation of Raulf Denktash. The Spokesman replied, "You know the Secretary-General sometimes makes wonderful slips of the tongue. I understand he used to call Mr. Stoltenberg, Mr. Stoltenberger all the time. And it took me four months of demarches to the 38th floor before he would stop calling me Spokeswoman. And now he goes `my spokes...man'."
A correspondent recalled that the Secretary-General had in Istanbul used the phrase, Federal Republic of Turkey, and commented that there seemed to be a problem in that. The Spokesman said sometimes she had that problem; she imagined correspondents did as well. "When you come back from a very long trip you tend to make some slips. It (the Secretary-General's) was not intentional."
Did the Secretary-General have any comment on the Russian Federation statement on the quasi-endorsement by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) of his candidacy for a second term? a correspondent asked. The Spokesman said, "I don't think any of us who read the OAU endorsement of his candidacy considered it quasi. It was a pretty clear endorsement, especially considering the amount of pressure going on at that time. I think the Russian endorsement was also very clearly an endorsement".
Asked whether there were plans to protect members of the International Police Task Force (IPTF), she said she did not know what exactly new precautions were being taken, but she did know that "people from whose mouths these threats have been coming" were being talked to in a very stern manner. "This is totally unacceptable. These people (IPTF) are unarmed. They are there to protect everyone. They have been very, very fair, objective and neutral in an attempt to protect all citizens no matter what their ethnic group. And to suddenly target those who obviously are the most vulnerable, i.e. the ones who do not try to run around in big tanks, with sub-machine guns in their arms, that is pretty cowardly, isn't it?" She added, "And we're letting them know it. It's unacceptable, and we'll not accept it."
She then announced, with reference to Mr. Han, "Can our secret guest, please come in. You haven't met this gentleman yet. He is one of my favourite Special Representatives."
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