DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
19961218
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
Sylvana Foa, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, opened today's briefing (which followed a briefing by Kofi Annan in his capacity as Secretary-General Elect) by commenting that she had a really hard act to follow. She expressed surprise at seeing the Assembly President's spokesperson, Samsiah Abdul-Majid at the briefing. "What are you doing here, Samsiah? I thought the General Assembly was going to fold last night at one in the morning or something, and you guys were all using your non-refundable tickets".
The big news of the day, she went on, was the drama unfolding in Lima, Peru. The Secretary-General was deeply shocked to learn of the attack on the residence of the Japanese ambassador. He condemned this violation of international law, and called for the swift and safe release of all of those being held. She could confirm, said Ms. Foa, that there were United Nations people among the hostages. She did not have a full list or any names yet, but everyone at Headquarters was thinking about the hostages -- "and very very concerned".
All in all, it had been an ugly week, she said. She recalled yesterday's events, when six members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), five of them women, were killed in their beds in Chechnya. Because of those murders, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had now put on hold all its aid programmes around Chechnya. The UNHCR had 14 international and 30 local staff stationed around Chechnya, working on aid projects benefiting displaced Chechens who had moved into the neighbouring republics of Dargestan, Ingushetia and North Ossetia. Those projects included providing emergency aid, sanitation, and housing, and involved about 80,000 displaced Chechens in the three republics. The UNHCR had frozen all projects there because the work involved staff crossing regularly into Chechnya.
"It's been decided that this was much too dangerous", said the Spokesman. The Department for Humanitarian Affairs had announced that because of increased security problems, and in solidarity with the ICRC and other aid organizations that had suspended their activities in Chechnya, the 1997 Inter- agency Consolidated Appeal to benefit the return and reintegration of displaced persons from Chechnya had been postponed. It had earlier been planned to release the appeal this week. Obviously, it was not considered a priority to help people to return after what had happened. The Secretary-General, Ms. Foa told correspondents, had named Assistant Secretary-General Manfred Eisele officer-in-charge of the Department of Peace- Keeping Operations (DPKO). That was being announced today and until further notice Mr. Eisele would hold that position.
In the United Republic of Tanzania, she said, the flood of refugees returning to Rwanda had now slowed to a trickle. As of briefing time today, only about 19,000 had crossed the border from Tanzania. That compared with almost 70,000 yesterday. The total number of Rwandans who had returned from Tanzania since 1 December now stood at 227,000, out of an estimated 540,000 in Tanzania. She confirmed that there had been a shooting incident involving Rwandan soldiers and a United Nations convoy pickup truck. Apparently, the truck's brakes slipped and it had moved when it was not supposed to. There had been firing, but no one was hurt and there had been no suspension of repatriation operations. The "unfortunate incident", which appeared unintentional, had not affected those operations.
The Security Council yesterday sent a positive response to the Secretary-General concerning his proposal to send an assessment mission to Sierra Leone to develop recommendations on ways the United Nations could assist the peace process there. Both the President of Sierra Leone and the opposition leader had requested the Secretary-General to send neutral international observers to assist in implementation of the peace accords. The Secretary-General would now be sending Brigadier Y. K. Saksena, currently Deputy Force Commander of the United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM III). The mission would include seven other civilian and military staff members. They expected to reach Freetown, Sierra Leone on Sunday, 22 December.
The Spokesman told correspondents that "661 (the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 661 (1990) to monitor sanctions against Iraq) was meeting today to discuss the situation between Iraq and Kuwait. That closed meeting would be at 3:30 p.m. Following the meeting and following the oral briefing to interested members of delegations, the Committee Chairman, Tono Eitel, would give a briefing to the press in Room 226 at approximately 5.00 or 5:30 p.m.
Tomorrow, said Ms. Foa, the Permanent Representative of Belarus, Alyaksandr Sychou, who was also Chairman of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), would give his much-postponed briefing on the Committee's work. He would also speak in his capacity as his country's Permanent Representative.
As of 11 a.m., she said, the overseers monitoring Council resolution 986 (1996) on Iraqi oil sales had approved ten contracts, with none pending.
The Non-Governmental Organization Resource Centre, currently located on First Avenue in the old United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) building, was moving to the Secretariat building. The Secretary- General had told the non-governmental organizations that the United Nations was their home and to prove it, they had been allocated a space under the library, next to the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium. At the moment it was only a shell, but the non-governmental organizations hoped it would soon house a very
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modern resource centre where information would be available to non- governmental organizations and the media on all of the activities of the United Nations system. The Secretary-General would inaugurate the new space at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, 19 December.
A correspondent asked for the latest information on disarmament and demobilization in Liberia. The Spokesman told him that there was "not yet much to crow about". The process had been moving slowly. Approximately 5,000 combatants, including about 1,500 child-soldiers, had been demobilized. The weapons collected had been mostly small and light arms.
Asked for further information on the Iraqi oil-sale contracts -- who was signing them, which countries, and so forth -- the Spokesman said that for some reason such queries had been rebuffed as "none of our business". Apparently, the companies signing such contracts went out and told the press themselves. The overseers were not media-oriented, to put it mildly. Associate Spokesman Juan Carlos Brandt, she said, was going to hold a training course in information dispersal for them, so things might slowly get better.
A correspondent asked whether there was dissatisfaction over the situation in Angola, particularly over such issues as the quartering of soldiers. Ms. Foa said she was not getting a sense of dissatisfaction from Angola, just gratitude that the process was going forward at all after 20 years of conflict. The peace process was undoubtedly slow. Nevertheless, UNAVEM III had certified that the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) had now quartered all its soldiers. Minor obstacles remained, but the process was moving slowly forward. Not as swiftly as might be wished, but certainly better than nothing.
Asked about the position that might be offered to UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, the Spokesman said that according to the last cables she had seen from Angola, the question was still under discussion.
Samsiah Abdul-Majid, spokeswoman for General Assembly President Razali Ismail (Malaysia), said that the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budget) had ended yesterday's formal meeting at 12.35 this morning. For detailed information on that meeting, she called correspondents' attention to Press Release GA/AB/3132, the result of a labour of love by the hard-working people in the Meetings Coverage Section who had also been in action in the wee hours of the morning.
The gist of what happened, she said, was that the Fifth Committee had "adjusted downward" -- in other words reduced -- appropriations of $2.608 billion by about $5 million (to $2.603 billion) for the 1996-1997 budget. It recommended $2.8 million for the International Seabed Authority in 1997, and also approved an increase in salary scale for staff at the professional and higher categories of up to 0.4 per cent. It approved a number of financing arrangements for peace-keeping and other purposes:
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$23.6 million for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; $23.1 million for the Tribunal for Rwanda; $27.4 million for the United Nations Support Mission in Haiti (UNSMIH); and $12.9 million for the combined forces in the former Yugoslavia. It had set a deadline of 31 March 1997 for the Assembly to adopt the methodology that will instruct the Committee on Contributions to recommend the scale of assessments for the period 1998-2000. That Committee's recommendation was for the fifty-second session of the General Assembly.
The Committee also recommended to the Assembly that the item relating to human resources management be deferred to the Committee's resumed session, expected to take place in the middle of March. All those recommendations would be taken up in the plenary this afternoon, when the Assembly would conclude the main segment of the current session.
For correspondents who wished to see what had happened in previous years, Ms. Abdul-Majid said that in 1995, 1994, 1993 and 1992, the Assembly had concluded the main segment of the session on 23 December. In 1991 it concluded the main segment on 20 December.
An issue of intensive discussion in informals last night and this morning was a paragraph which affected both the medium-term plan 1998-2001 and the budget outline for 1998-1999. The Committee was scheduled to meet in formal session as she spoke, said Ms. Abdul-Majid, on the budget outline 1998-1989, the pension system, the medium-term plan 1998-2001, and assessments for peace-keeping operations. Following a brief recess after yesterday's consideration by the plenary of item 16 (appointment of the Secretary-General), the Assembly had resumed its meeting. Among the resolutions it adopted were drafts from the Sixth Committee relating to: the international criminal court; measures to suppress international terrorism; the framework convention for non-navigational use of international watercourses; a five-part draft resolution on the World Social Summit; and -- adopted by a vote of 149 to none against, with 2 abstentions -- a draft on Bosnia and Herzegovina. The text on Bosnia, she said, stressed the importance of the full, comprehensive and consistent implementation of the Peace Agreement; called upon all parties to cooperate fully and in good faith in the prompt formation and functioning of all new common institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in establishing the necessary conditions for holding democratic, free and fair elections at the municipal level; insisted upon the need to deliver all indictees to the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for trial; and strongly condemned all acts of intimidation designed to discourage the voluntary return of refugees and displaced persons. Among other actions yesterday was the proclamation of 21 November as World Television Day and an invitation to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to participate in the sessions and work of the Assembly in an observer capacity.
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In response to questions received from correspondents, Ms. Abdul-Majid said that the Assembly had so far adopted 243 resolutions in plenary. Of those, 57 were resolutions that did not go to the Main Committees (Disarmament and International Security); 46 were from the First Committee; 26 from the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization); 28 from the Second Committee (Economic and Financial); 63 from the Third Committee (Social, Cultural and Humanitarian); 14 from the Sixth Committee (Legal); and 9 -- as of last night -- from the Fifth Committee.
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