DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Juan Carlos Brandt, Associate Spokesman for the Secretary-General, announced at today's noon briefing that the Secretary-General's investigative team for the Democratic Republic of the Congo would leave Geneva tomorrow, Saturday, 23 August, and arrive in Kinshasa on Sunday, 24 August, at 6 a.m., local time. The team, headed by Atsu Kofi-Amega (Togo), with Reed Brody (United States) and Andrew Chigovera (Zimbabwe), would be assisted by human rights officers and forensic experts in implementing its mandate to investigate allegations of serious violations of human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since March 1993. They would report to Secretary-General Kofi Annan by the end of December. The spokesperson for the team would be Myriam Dessables from the Spokesman's Office, whose mobile telephone number in Kinshasa would be 243-880-0896. Briefing notes in English and French containing that information were available from the Spokesman's Office.

Also available in that office, said Mr. Brandt, was a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the situation in the Great Lakes region of Africa, which emphasized three points. The first was that the UNHCR and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) would hold high- level consultations to seek a solution for the remaining thousands of Rwandan and Burundi refugees. Second, the High Commissioner had condemned the expulsion of some UNHCR-recognized refugees from Gabon. And, third, intensified fighting in the Republic of Congo had prompted an influx of refugees into the former Zaire, disrupting UNHCR repatriation flights for Rwandan and Burundi refugees, and had prevented the screening of those unwilling to return.

The Associate Spokesman then told correspondents that available briefing notes from the spokesman for the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH), Alexander Ivanko, provided updates on the situation in the Republika Srpska and relayed information on the functions begun by the International Police Task Force (IPTF) in Banja Luka. The functions were the monitoring of the activities of the police, the training and vetting of police officers and the continued investigations into allegations of human rights abuses.

Also related to the former Yugoslavia, Mr. Brandt said, was information from the UNHCR that some 430 families of internally displaced persons had returned to their homes in villages near Jajce town, in Central Bosnia and Herzegovina. About 430 houses had been re-occupied by their rightful owners between 16 and 21 August. Those families had been displaced since 1992 by the conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and their safe return had been part of an agreement achieved by the Working Group of the Subcommission of Refugees and Displaced Persons. Movement into the villages was helped by IPTF, by the

Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and by local police. The UNHCR welcomed and encouraged the support being provided by SFOR, which was contributing to the return of the displaced persons.

Mr. Brandt said the States parties to the biological weapons convention would meet at 10 a.m. on Monday, 25 August, in a closed, formal consultative meeting at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, to consider Cuba's allegations that it had been the target of "biological aggression". The Associate Spokesman quoted from briefing notes provided today in Geneva. The meeting, to be chaired by the United Kingdom, was expected to last for a day. The decision to hold the meeting, he reminded reporters, was taken at an informal consultative meeting held on 31 July at Cuba's request, following Cuba's formal complaints that it had been the target of "biological aggression". The consultative process would be carried out in accordance with article 5 of the biological weapons convention and a procedure established in 1991 during the Third Review Conference of the parties to that treaty. It was understood that it was the first time that such a meeting would be held in accordance with the new procedure. The United States, the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation were the depositaries of the Convention which, by the end of February, had 139 States parties.

Mr. Brandt noted a situation report on the floods in the Seychelles, from the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) in Geneva which stated that continuing heavy rains between 13 and 17 August had caused two deaths and damage estimated at about $5.5 million to homes, forests and agricultural land. At the request of the Seychelles Government, DHA-Geneva would tomorrow, Saturday, 23 August, send a United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team to the country.

Recalling questions he had been asked previously on humanitarian activities in Iraq, Associate Spokesman Brandt said the new Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, would arrive in Baghdad on 1 September to assume his duties. Before that, he would have a series of meetings for about one week, as from Monday, 25 August, in order to be briefed on his mandate. Mr. Halliday would meet with Secretariat officials, the President of the Security Council, members of the Sanctions Committee set up under Council resolution 661 (1990) and the Permanent Representatives of several Member States. Staffan de Mistura, Mr. Halliday's predecessor, was expected to offer a debriefing on the progress so far made on the implementation of Security Council resolution 986 (1995) to an inter-agency meeting that week. The resolution allowed Iraq to sell some petroleum and related products to enable it to buy humanitarian goods. Mr. Brandt said he would try to get Mr. de Mistura and Mr. Halliday to talk to the media next week.

Representatives of the DHA and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had held consultations this week in New York on the Second Phase of the Disaster Management Training Programme (DMTP), a jointly managed project created in 1990 by the former United Nations Disaster Relief Organization

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 22 August 1997

(UNDRO) and the UNDP, the Associate Spokesman said. The Programme was meant to train national government officials, United Nations country agencies, donors and non-governmental organizations to strengthen their capacities for managing complex emergencies and natural disasters. A note containing details on the matter was available in the Spokesman's Office. Regarding Cambodia, Mr. Brandt cited a UNHCR report which stated that a further 2,500 Cambodian refugees had crossed into Thailand's Drat Province, the southernmost province on the Thai-Cambodia border. The arrivals were in addition to the more than 20,000 who had crossed into Thailand earlier this week from northern Cambodia. The UNHCR was helping Thailand care for the 20,000 people, providing food rations. It had expressed its belief that those people should not return until the fighting had stopped and they had received guarantees of freedom from endangerment and persecution. It was also asking Thai authorities to continue allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into their territory. The Associate Spokesman was asked whether Cuba had named the country that had allegedly committed "biological aggression" against it. In response, he said he believed that the Cubans had done so in public and their views had been published in the media, but had not done so in the context of the upcoming Geneva meeting, the outcome of which should be awaited. Asked whether the investigation team heading to the Democratic Republic of the Congo would start its work afresh or carry on from where a preceding team had left off, Mr. Brandt said that the team's terms of reference were clear and that "they will do whatever is necessary to accomplish their mission". The mission, he added, was to ascertain allegations of massacres that occurred in the former Zaire. The team was very capable and would meet its December deadline. In response to a question as to whether the team had received guarantees of cooperation from the concerned Government, he said the team's leader, Mr. Amega, had told the media that his mission had so far received the Democratic Republic Government's best possible help towards the implementation of its mandate. Nothing indicated so far that such an assessment had changed. Asked to comment on reports that the leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Jonas Savimbi, was willing to give up some of the Angolan provinces he controlled, the Associate Spokesman said that the situation in that country was very tense and very serious, as reflected by the activities of the Security Council this week, which had been briefed by the Secretariat and had read the Secretary-General's report. Also, he understood that some Council members were crafting a resolution that would impose sanctions on UNITA. Pressed to say what more could be done to UNITA, since it was already under a sanctions regime, Mr. Brandt replied: "Let us wait, as I have not seen that piece which is being drafted right now". Mr. Brandt then announced that, as always, the Office of the Spokesman would be staffed over the weekend to answer questions on any developments.

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