DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
19970425
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, told correspondents at today's noon briefing that staff members of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had been allowed by Laurent Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo/Zaire (ADFL) and the Government of Rwanda to overfly the area south of Kisangani, Zaire, today to search for refugees. Representatives of the Alliance and the Rwandan Government were on the plane.
The camp at Kasese, which they had reached on the ground yesterday, "remained completely abandoned and picked clean of all supplies", the Spokesman said. Fifty-thousand people had been sheltered in that camp. The second camp farther south at Biaro, which they had not reached yesterday and which had had a population of 30,000, was also empty. Farther south, flying along the railroad line, the group saw debris, suggesting that refugees had passed that way. At Kilometre 73, they spotted 20 to 30 people heading south on the railway line. They landed at Kilometre 95 and spoke to some local people who told them they had not seen any large movement of people, but had seen about 30 refugees, some of them armed, passing through a few days ago. The group returned to Kisangani overflying the road parallel to the railway, and saw several hundred refugees in two groups heading south at Kilometres 70 and 82. Mr. Eckhard said that the Secretary-General felt that "many innocent people here are victims of a policy of slow extermination". Refugees were being systematically harassed and attacked, and vital humanitarian assistance was not being allowed to reach them. The Secretary-General had met yesterday with a support group on Zaire and, today, he would meet with representatives of the neighbouring States. In both meetings, he was urging all of those governments to work together to stop the inhuman treatment of those refugees. He felt very strongly that those responsible for that treatment must be held accountable.
Continuing, he said there would be a background briefing on eastern Zaire today at 2 p.m. in room 226 with a senior United Nations official. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, was arriving in New York over the weekend. She would brief the Security Council on developments in eastern Zaire on Monday and address correspondents at the noon briefing.
Mr. Eckhard announced that the sixteenth session of the Commission on Human Settlements would open on Monday, 28 April, at the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), in Nairobi. The meeting would take place from 28 April to 7 May.
Not directly connected to that announcement, the Spokesman said, was a release today from the Office of Internal Oversight Services on a review of the programme and administrative practices of Habitat. It would be available in the course of the afternoon.
The Secretary-General took note of the report's findings and concurred with its recommendations, Mr. Eckhard continued. Among other matters, the report noted that "in the absence of leadership, significant shortcomings developed in the management of the programmes and resources of the Centre, both human and financial". It also said that "in view of the serious nature of the problems identified by the inspection team, allowing the current state of affairs to persist for any length of time into the future would be reprehensible". Among the report's recommendations was that the new programme of the Centre be more focused, better integrated and reflect the strong linkages between research and technical cooperation. It should take into account the constraints imposed by the scarcity of resources. A mechanism to monitor and evaluate organizational performance was also needed. The Oversight Office team had visited Habitat's headquarters last year from 24 September to 1 October.
The United States Senate, he acknowledged, voted in favour of ratifying the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and of Their Destruction. A statement on behalf of the Secretary-General had been issued this morning welcoming that fact. Bangladesh had deposited its instrument of ratification of that Convention today. China would deposit its instrument of ratification this afternoon at 3 p.m. Both countries had signed the Convention on 13 January. The number of signatory States was now 164. The number of ratifying countries this afternoon would reach 76. It had already been determined that the Convention would enter into force on 29 April.
Continuing, Mr. Eckhard said that the First Conference of the States Parties -- those which had ratified the Convention -- would open on 6 May. Correspondents wishing to cover that session could still apply for and obtain proper accreditation from the Provisional Technical Secretariat. Media accreditation forms were available in the Spokesman's Office.
Regarding a question yesterday about the Secretary-General's position on small arms, the Spokesman reminded correspondents that the fiftieth session of the General Assembly had established a group of governmental experts on small arms. The 16-country group had held its first session in 1996. Its second session would take place in Tokyo in May. The Secretary-General, in his address on 29 January to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, had made reference to conventional weapons. Page 3 of the official text contained those remarks, he added.
Concerning Liberia, Under-Secretary-General for Peace-keeping Operations Bernard Miyet was scheduled to brief the Security Council today, Mr. Eckhard
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said. In Liberia, preparations for the elections continued, but the process had been slower than expected. As previously announced, the preparations had been suspended by the head of the Liberian Independent Elections Commission. After some delay, the Commission had now completed a draft electoral law and was submitting it today to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) assessment team led by the Foreign Minister of Nigeria and Special Envoy of the Chairman of ECOWAS, Tom Ikimi, in Monrovia. The decision of the ECOWAS assessment team on the adoption of the law was expected shortly. It was also expected to take a decision concerning the date of elections, which were currently scheduled for 30 May.
Mr. Eckhard announced that the Secretary-General had decided to appoint Robert van Schaik, the former Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the United Nations, as his Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs for the Sudan. Mr. van Schaik would succeed Vieri Traxler, who resigned last September because of ill health.
Concerning the Sudan, its population had been severely affected by the civil conflict, now in its fourteenth year, Mr. Eckhard said. More than 1 million lives had been lost, and some 4 million persons were internally displaced by the conflict. Donor response to the January to December 1997 United Nations Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal for the Sudan had been "distressingly low". As of 8 April of this year, only 5 per cent of the total requirements of $120.8 million had been mobilized.
The Spokesman said that the Canadian Minister for International Cooperation who was also the Minister Responsible for la Francophonie, Don Boudria, would meet with the Secretary-General on Monday, 28 April, at 11 a.m. He would be in New York for one week on a visit. Following his meeting with the Secretary-General, Mr. Boudria would be available to the media at 11:30 a.m. at the Delegates' Entrance.
There was a briefing by David Rohde, Pulitzer Prize winning author of the book Endgame - Srebrenica, How Guilty is the UN?, the Spokesman said. The briefing, sponsored by the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA), would take place on Monday at 1:30 p.m. in the UNCA Club.
A correspondent said that the Secretary-General's remarks on the "slow extermination" in Zaire was "pretty strong stuff", and asked who the United Nations thought was responsible. Mr. Eckhard said "well, that's the question, isn't it"? There had been, first of all, repeated impediments put in the way of the agencies of the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations trying to help those people. For months, the population had been displaced from place after place, where they had tried to settle down. The agencies had tried to congregate them in order to carry out an orderly programme of assistance. There was increasing suspicion that those people were being attacked in an organized way. What the Secretary-General wanted was for the governments with any influence over the parties in the area, particularly on
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the Alliance headed by Mr. Kabila, to use that influence to allow normal humanitarian activity to take place. "As long as it is intentionally impeded, you have to say -- people are intentionally being allowed to die", he said.
To a follow-up question about whether the United Nations thought Mr. Kabila was actually in charge of the rebel forces in that area, and whether he had control over what they were doing, Mr. Eckhard said that they were under his command. The Secretary-General had said in his statement outside the Security Council this week that if they were under his control, he should exercise that control -- for the good. So, some questioned whether, in fact, Mr. Kabila had total control. Whoever had control of those people, though, must accept responsibility for their behaviour.
Asked by the correspondent what the Secretary-General meant by accountability for treatment of the refugees, Mr. Eckhard said that if, in fact, they were found to have allowed large numbers of people to die, there were international conventions on that subject, and there could be an international procedure to be followed to prosecute them. Like in a new war crimes tribunal? the correspondent asked. Mr. Eckhard said, "like an existing war crimes tribunal".
Did the Secretary-General perceive the situation to be one where the refugees were still under the control of armed groups, whereby there was a deliberate policy of extermination of unarmed refugees, or did he perceive it as a situation in which people were dying because of an armed confrontation? a correspondent asked.
Mr. Eckhard said that a majority of those people were not combatants. They had been, from the beginning, hostages of armed elements that fled Rwanda, and they had been used, in a sense, as human shields. It was those people, in particular, "whom we want to see saved, rather than continue to be victimized from that conflict which is continuing in Zaire from Rwanda".
Pressed further on the Secretary-General's perception of whether the so-called extermination of refugees was deliberate or a result of the conflict, the Spokesman said the Secretary-General did not wish to speculate on motivations.
The correspondent again asked whether the United Nations actually saw the situation to be one in which armed elements continued to use those people as human shields. Mr. Eckhard said "our assumption is that that continues to be the case, and our observations are people are dying daily for lack of assistance. And, we are not being allowed access to these people to assist them, and this is wrong".
Concerning the Secretary-General's contact with regional leaders on the situation, Mr. Eckhard recalled that he had mentioned that the Secretary- General had met yesterday with a new support group for Zaire, which included
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some 20 States. Today, the Secretary-General was meeting with a group of neighbouring States. His message to both those groups was to "unite in your efforts to bring an end to this humanitarian catastrophe. If you have any influence on the actors, use it".
Concerning the draft resolution before the General Assembly referring to East Jerusalem as an occupied territory, a correspondent asked how the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) was going to deal with Israel in that regard. Mr. Eckhard said that UNTSO had its mandate, which would continue until it was changed by the Security Council.
Asked for an update on the movements of Mohamed Sahnoun, the joint United Nations/Organization of African Unity (OAU) Special Representative for the Great Lakes Region, Mr. Eckhard said that Mr. Sahnoun was in Pretoria today, and was in Windhoek yesterday. He was visiting the countries of the region to reinforce the Secretary-General's own efforts here at Headquarters. Mr. Sahnoun's objective was political -- to try to get a meeting between Mobutu Sese Seko and Laurent Kabila.
When the Secretary-General concurred with the Oversight Office findings on Habitat, was he in fact saying that the current management of the Centre had been at fault, and if so, was there going to be a fallout? a correspondent asked. Mr. Eckhard recommended that he review the report which the Secretary- General had endorsed. In each case where the Office had been critical of the management of a United Nations agency or entity, there had been fallout, adding that "we hope for the better".
A correspondent, noting that this was the second time this week that the Secretary-General, through the Spokesman or on his own, had appealed to those with influence over Mr. Kabila to exercise it, asked if that implied that those countries which did have such influence had not been doing all that they might to pressure him. Mr. Eckhard said "yes".
Asked if the Spokesman could name those countries, he answered "no".
Asked if France had lost all its influence in that region or had it washed its hands entirely, Mr. Eckhard said that France was present at yesterday's meeting, and remained actively engaged, and the Secretary-General appreciated France's efforts in the current crisis.
Asked whether the Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories, Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, was in Gaza and whether he would be involved in monitoring the relevant paragraphs of today's General Assembly resolution, Mr. Eckhard said he would seek an official answer for the correspondent.
Samsiah Abdul-Majid, spokeswoman for General Assembly President Razali Ismail (Malaysia), said that the tenth emergency special session of the Assembly had continued this morning with the introduction by Indonesia of a
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draft resolution on illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.
The draft in blue in all languages was made available to correspondents last evening, and the final draft was now out. she said. There was a possibility that the draft would be put to a vote at the end of this morning's meeting.
The draft was sponsored by 32 countries, she said. Pakistan should be added to the list of co-sponsors identified in document A/ES-10/L.1
The spokeswoman said that by the terms of the draft, the Assembly would condemn the construction by Israel, the occupying Power, of a new settlement in Jabal Abu Ghneim to the south of occupied East Jerusalem and all other illegal Israeli actions in all the occupied territories. It would demand immediate and full cessation of the construction in Jabal Abu Ghneim and of all other Israeli settlement activities, as well as of all illegal measures and actions in Jerusalem.
By further terms of the text, she said, the Assembly would call for the cessation of all forms of assistance and support for illegal Israeli activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, in particular settlement activities. The Secretary-General would be requested to monitor the situation and to submit a report on the implementation of the present resolution, within two months of its adoption.
Also according to that draft, she said, the Assembly would express the need for scrupulous implementation of the agreements reached between the parties, and would urge the sponsors of the peace process, the interested parties and the entire international community to exert all the necessary efforts to revive the peace process and to ensure its success. It would reject terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. The Assembly would decide to adjourn the tenth emergency special session temporarily and to authorize the Assembly President to resume its meetings upon request from Member States.
At the time of the briefing, 15 delegations had spoken and five more were inscribed to speak, she said. They were Botswana, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Israel, Eritrea, Mexico and Norway had requested to speak before the vote, and the Russian Federation, Syria, Rwanda, Australia, Germany, and Canada after the vote. (The Assembly adopted the draft resolution at its morning meeting by a vote of 134 in favour to 3 against (Israel, Micronesia, United States, with 11 abstentions.))
The spokeswoman said that as indicated in the Journal, the Assembly would meet in its regular session immediately following the tenth emergency special session. The regular session would consider a draft resolution on
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emergency international assistance for peace, normalcy and rehabilitation in Tajikistan (document A/51/L.71).
Thirty-five countries were sponsoring that draft, including four permanent members of the Security Council, she said. Co-sponsors to be added to those listed in the document were Iran, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Slovenia and Sweden.
For those who had not seen the draft, she would like to bring to their attention a number of operative paragraphs. By the draft, the Assembly would encourage Member States and others concerned to respond promptly and generously to the consolidated inter-agency donor alert; and encourage States to contribute to the voluntary fund established by the Secretary-General in accordance with Security Council resolution 968 (1994).
Also by that text, she said that the Assembly would encourage the parties to cooperate in order to reduce threat from the indiscriminate use of land-mines to the civilian population of Tajikistan and to the provision of humanitarian assistance. It would request the Secretary-General to continue to monitor the humanitarian situation there and would decide to consider at its fifty-second session the question of the situation of Tajikistan. (The draft was adopted without a vote.)
Mauritania, had been taken off the list of countries affected by Article 19 of the United Nations Charter, which outlines the "no vote" restriction for non-payment of dues, reducing the number of countries on the list to 25.
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