DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
19970605
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
Fred Eckhard, the Spokesman for the Secretary-General, began today's noon briefing by announcing that the Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, James Baker III, had invited representatives of Morocco, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO), Algeria and Mauritania to meet with him in London on 11 and 12 June. The meetings were part of Mr. Baker's fresh assessment of the situation in Western Sahara, which he had been asked to make by the Secretary- General. Details on the time and place for the meetings would be provided at a later date.
Fighting today in Congo-Brazzaville, between forces of former President Denis Sassou Nguesso and the Government had prevented staff of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from gaining access to the Bilolo transit camp, Mr. Eckhard said. Unidentified armed people blocked the way into the camp, which is in an area where supporters of the former President live. As a result, the 5,000 Rwandan refugees in the camp did not receive food rations today.
The UNHCR was due to begin repatriating refugees from Bilolo on Saturday, Mr. Eckhard said. The planning figure for the operation is 20,000 people. There were some 14,000 Rwandan refugees in swampy and inaccessible areas in the northern provinces of Congo-Brazzaville and 300 to 600 refugees per day continued to arrive at the camp.
A United Nations Coordination Unit had been established in Conakry, Guinea, to monitor the situation in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Mr. Eckhard said. The Unit would prepare an inter-agency assessment mission to the capital to assess humanitarian needs. It would maintain close contact with the United Nations system currently administered by national staff, and give them moral and administrative support wherever possible.
According to UNHCR reports, some 14,400 new refugees had been registered in Forecariah, Guinea, by 3 June, Mr. Eckhard said. Many of them had fled earlier violence in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. The United States evacuated another 2,700 expatriates yesterday, and France evacuated 700 people. All expatriates were now believed to have left Freetown.
Daily Press Briefing - 2 - 5 June 1997
In Geneva today, the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Yevgeny Primakov, told the Conference on Disarmament that his Government considered the complete ban on anti-personnel land-mines to be a goal, the movement towards which should probably consist of a number of agreed time stages, Mr. Eckhard said. The Foreign Minister also urged those States which possess considerable technical potential in the nuclear sphere and have not yet signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty to do so.
He said Mr. Primakov had recalled that "the Russian Federation is committed to the goal of prohibition and elimination of chemical weapons worldwide" and that the Russian deputies -- the members of the Duma -- have expressed their intention to complete ratification of the Convention as early as next fall.
The Secretary-General's report on the group of military observers attached to the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) was expected to be issued on Monday, 9 June, Mr. Eckhard said. The three-month- long peace-keeping mission had been successfully completed and the last United Nations military observers left Guatemala on 27 May.
Mr. Eckhard said that Horacio Boneo, former Director of the Electoral Assistance Division, had completed his mission to examine allegations that the head of MINUGUA covered up the disappearance of a former member of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG). Mr. Boneo was back at Headquarters preparing his report to the Secretary-General and it was expected to be completed shortly.
The Secretary-General was preparing a report on the United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM III), whose mandate would expire at the end of June, Mr. Eckhard said. The report was expected to recommend a follow- on United Nations mission and to include suggestions on its structure, specific goals and cost implications.
The Security Council, in its consultations this morning, considered the Secretary-General's report on Tajikistan and heard briefings by the Secretariat on Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, Mr. Eckhard said. The Secretary- General would brief the Council on Tuesday, 10 June, on his discussions at the recent summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Harare, Zimbabwe. He was expected to give special emphasis to the situations in the Great Lakes region of Africa, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Angola.
The Secretary-General would return to the United States today via Boston, Mr. Eckhard said. Tomorrow, he would give the commencement address at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then fly to Washington D.C., where he would give a speech in the evening at the Convention of the United Nations Association of the United States of America, not a UNA-USA fund- raiser, as had previously been announced .
Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 5 June 1997
The recently taped World Chronicle television programme, No. 672, would feature General Assembly President Razali Ismail (Malaysia), Mr. Eckhard said. It would be shown at 3:30 p.m. today on in-house channels 3 or 31.
Asked for more details on a United Nations follow-on mission in Angola, Mr. Eckhard said any comment would be a kind of "sneak preview" of the Secretary-General's report, which had not yet gone to the Security Council. Would Mr. Eckhard ask Security Council President Sergey Lavrov (Russian Federation) not to give press briefings at the same time as the noon briefing? a correspondent asked. Mr. Eckhard said he hesitated to put that suggestion to the President, but at the correspondent's request he would do so.
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