DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
19961028
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
At today's noon briefing Sylvana Foa, Spokesman for the Secretary- General, reminded correspondents that they would shortly be hearing about the humanitarian situation in Iraq. Scheduled to handle that briefing were the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Yasushi Akashi, the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Catherine Bertini, and the Executive Director of the United Nations Emergency Fund for Children (UNICEF) Carol Bellamy.
Tomorrow, the Spokesman continued, the Secretary-General of the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) Wally N'Dow, would be at Headquarters to discuss his report on the global plan of action for human settlements -- the Habitat Agenda. He would be introducing the report (which was already available to correspondents) to the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) at 3 p.m. tomorrow.
There had been many questions on Saturday night's Yankee game, referring to the United States baseball World Series game between the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves, said the Spokesman. The Secretary-General, whose agenda cut deeply into his television time, had been unable to watch it. However, on arrival at Headquarters this morning he had asked several aides why everyone was grinning. Told that it was because the Yankees had won the World Series, he said he was very happy to hear it. Anyway, he was thrilled the staff were so happy for the "home team".
Francis Okello, deputy head of the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan, was now on his way to Tehran to attend the meeting on Afghanistan to be hosted early this week by Iran, Ms. Foa said. Meanwhile, "our dynamo", Norbert Holl, head of the Special Mission, had been in Kandahar on 24 October, meeting with Taliban leaders Mullah Ghaus and Mullah Abbas. He had discussed with them an immediate cease-fire, the question of the exchange of prisoners of war, and political dialogue among all the parties. Yesterday he had flown back to Mazar-i-Sharif and then on to Sherbeghan to meet with General Abdul Rashid Dostum. He was continuing his mediation efforts today, and was reporting back to Headquarters with fair consistency. "So we're keeping our fingers crossed for him."
Updating correspondents on eastern Zaire, Ms. Foa said that reports from the field described the situation as "desperate". On Saturday there was an attack near Kibumba camp, where 194,000 refugees had been housed, making it the second largest camp in the northern Goma area. It had come under heavy artillery and mortar fire between 9 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Saturday. The camp
was now empty and, according to reports from people in the vicinity, still burning. Nearly the whole population of Kibumba -- with the exception of some very old people who were still straggling along the road -- had moved to a camp called Mugunga, which until then had housed around 150,000 refugees. With the added population from Kibumba, there were now 350,000 people in the camp, which made it the largest refugee camp in the world today.
"This is not good news", the Spokesman continued. "This camp is built on volcanic rock, a total lunar landscape. The idea of building latrines there is a nightmare, and the idea of getting water into the camp is a nightmare." As the people on the ground were saying, the situation was indeed desperate. Of the 1.2 million refugees in eastern Zaire, the United Nations had access to only about 400,000. The rest were cut off and getting no assistance whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the Rwanda and Burundi refugees in Mugunga had been joined by another 10,000 displaced Zairians, Ms. Foa said. There was yet another twist to the tale of horror: 3,000 Zairian refugees had now crossed the border into Rwanda, together with about 1,100 Rwandan refugees over the past week. There were another 20,000 displaced Rwandans in the Goma area who were getting very little help, and tens of thousands of Zairians on the move between Uvira and Bukavu.
There had also been fighting on Sunday in the vicinity of the Katale and Kahindo camps, which between them had a population of about 330,000 people, Ms. Foa said. Some soldiers had apparently been killed, although so far no reports of refugee casualties had come in. The situation in Mugunga had been described as chaotic. The camp straddled a national park, and there was concern among Zairian officials that "there's not going to be much park left".
The WFP food warehouse in Kibumba had been looted, said Ms. Foa, with the latest reports indicating that the Programme's food supplies in the region were still stuck at the Zaire-Uganda border, so that there was very little food and not much hope of getting anything in.
Reports from Uvira stated that the Banyamulenge were now urging local people who had fled Uvira to return to the city, Ms. Foa said. From Bukavu came reports of widespread looting. Offices of aid organizations, including Caritas, GTZ, CARE and Oxfam had all been looted. As correspondents were aware, 128 internationals had been evacuated out of Bukavu over the weekend; there were still about 80 left in the area.
The Spokesman drew correspondents' attention to a statement on the meeting of the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC), chaired last Friday and Saturday by the Secretary-General. Basically, the statement said that the ACC brings together the executive heads of all the United Nations specialized agencies, including the Bretton Woods institutions. They had met to review progress in the ongoing process of reform throughout the various
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agencies, and how it would affect the strengthening of the United Nations system as a whole. The ACC had decided that the ultimate aim of reform was to enhance cost-effectiveness and ultimately to strengthen the capacity of the system to address the new challenges of the post-cold-war era. The aim, according to the ACC, should not be cost-cutting for its own sake, but to improve the agencies' ability to deliver their mandates, in other words to improve efficiency. That was apparently the first time that the ACC had had a common position on reform, the Spokesman said. The statement was somewhat "UNese" in tone, but it was now available in her office.
In response to questions, the Spokesman confirmed that last Friday the Secretary-General and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Sadako Ogata, had briefed the Security Council on the situation in eastern Zaire. The Secretary-General had indicated that a medium-term solution would be to call an international conference. He had listed for the Council -- and for the press following Council consultations -- the difficulties that convening such a conference would entail. In the short term, what was needed was to get a mediator to the region armed with adequate resources -- "not just a mediator with a tin can and a string back to New York" -- who would try to get all the parties talking to achieve a cease-fire. The Secretary-General was still working on that: he had spent most of the weekend on the phone talking with lots of governments and lots of people. He hoped that "we'll have a mediator very soon".
A correspondent asked who took the decisions at the local level when aid agencies decided to evacuate a place like eastern Zaire, and who determined when conditions were favourable for their return. The Spokesman replied that the Organization had what was called a "designated security official" in just about every hot spot, a man or woman in constant contact with Benon Sevan, United Nations Security Coordinator in New York. Generally speaking, the security official on the spot would recommend evacuation, the bottom line being whether the agencies were actually able to perform their work. Clearly, if staff were locked in their offices with no communications and unable even to venture outside, they should be moved out, because the Organization had enough problems without having to worry about their security. However, agencies did not normally evacuate unless absolutely unable to function.
Asked about the possibility of airdrops to Mugunga camp, Ms. Foa replied that such drops were expensive and extremely dangerous. She recalled that the last time major airdrops had been attempted -- to supply Kurdish groups in northern Iraq -- quite a few lives had been lost as a result of supplies falling on children running excitedly beneath the descending packages. In the southern Sudan there had also been problems: recently a non-governmental organization worker had lost a leg in the same way. The Spokesman added that airdrops had been attempted in Goma right after the first wave of a million refugees into the area in 1994. They had not been very successful. What was needed for a successful airdrop was to have a team of 60 or 70 people cordon off a region and direct the plane making the drop. She understood that there
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was enough food in the area for two days, and the problem would be reviewed again tomorrow.
Asked about reports that France was prepared to provide a military presence in the area, the Spokesman replied that she had received no information on that score, but would check on it. The Secretary-General had already said that if the Security Council decided to send military observers, he would welcome them. To a correspondent who cited press reports of brand- new camouflage uniforms and modern weapons among the fighters, and asked who was arming the factions in eastern Zaire, Ms. Foa reiterated the Secretary- General's remark about military observers. Obviously there were too many guns in the region -- and they were not of local origin.
A correspondent asked the Spokesman for elaboration on a reference made by the UNHCR to new reception centres in Rwanda, designed to encourage people to return. Ms. Foa confirmed that the WFP had stockpiled food and the UNHCR was offering everything from tents and jerrycans to seeds and hoes. Everything was ready; the centres could take up to 15,000 people daily. So far, they had received about 1,100 over the past week. Yesterday 39 had come in, and today 30. It was not exactly a deluge of returning Rwandans; in fact, more Zairians were crossing into Rwanda than Rwandan refugees. The centres were at Gisenyi and at Mutara.
A correspondent asked about weekend press reports referring to the withdrawal of the statement by a key witness in the Tadic trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Ms. Foa replied that she had read the story, but had no details. She would check with The Hague and get back to the correspondent.
Samsiah Abdul-Majid, spokeswoman for General Assembly President Razali Ismail (Malaysia), said that the plenary had heard a statement this morning by the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Hans Blix, who had presented the Agency's report. Canada had introduced a draft resolution, and some 20 speakers were inscribed to speak on that item.
Last Friday the Assembly had adopted resolutions on assistance to Nicaragua and on cooperation with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, she said. Tomorrow it would take up the first report of the Credentials Committee and the report of the Assembly's working group on Security Council reform. A long discussion was expected on that item, with some 50 speakers inscribed.
Ms. Abdul-Majid told correspondents that the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) also had a draft resolution before it for introduction on the United Nations University, and would begin discussing integration of the economies in transition into the world economy.
The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) had a series of draft resolutions: three of them on crime prevention and criminal justice.
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By one of those drafts, recommended by the Economic and Social Council, the Assembly would approve the United Nations declaration on crime and public security. By the terms of another draft, on international action to combat drug abuse and illicit production and trafficking, the Assembly would decide to convene a special session in June 1998. On the question of elaborating the international convention against organized transnational crime, Member States would be invited to submit comments on the draft United Nations framework convention, proposed by Poland. The Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice would be requested to consider the question of the elaboration of that draft.
The Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) also had several draft resolutions before it, said Ms. Abdul-Majid. They included drafts on Tokelau and New Caledonia.
The Sixth Committee (Legal) would begin discussing the international criminal court this afternoon, she said.
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