DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, as he began today's press briefing, said that the Secretary-General should be entering the Building "just about now". He had arrived from Switzerland earlier this morning and had gone to the residence for a few hours to "freshen up". His programme of appointments for this afternoon was available in the Spokesman's Office.

He said there were some details from the balance of the Secretary-General's programme yesterday in Bern. Following the Secretary-General's visit to the Universal Postal Union (UPU), he met with the President of Switzerland, Arnold Koller, at 6:30 p.m. The subject of United Nations reform and its impact on the United Nations Office in Geneva were discussed, as well as development cooperation and United Nations programmes in Vienna to fight international crime and terrorism. The Swiss President was also the Federal Minister for Justice and Police. At 7 p.m., the Secretary-General met with the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs, Jean Pascal Delamuraz, who later hosted a dinner with the Swiss business community in the Secretary-General's honour. A list of those business leaders -- which read like a "Who's Who" of the business community of the country -- was available in the Spokesman's Office.

Also available, Mr. Eckhard said, was the text of the statement by the Secretary-General to the business leaders in Bern in which he said that it had become increasingly common for United Nations officials to meet with members of the business community. He, himself, had attended the World Economic Forum in Davos at the beginning of this year, visited the International Chamber of Commerce and the Confederation of Indian Industry on his official visit to India, and addressed the New York Stock Exchange -- which he said was "not a typical venue for United Nations Secretaries-General, but one in which I feel increasingly at home because I am trying to forge a partnership between the business community and the United Nations".

Mr. Eckhard said that the Secretary-General also told the Swiss business leaders that the "rapidly deepening partnership" between the United Nations and the corporate world was of particular importance to him. He said that "we are establishing new mechanisms for cooperation. We are finding new synergies, and learning how to make the most of each other's comparative advantages. Perhaps most important, a new spirit of confidence pervades our dealings. We're overcoming an earlier era of suspicion or simple lack of knowledge about each other's goals and activities". The Spokesman said that the Secretary- General "probably had in mind some of the discussions on transnational corporations that had taken place in the United Nations a decade or two ago".

Turning to news of the ferry disaster in Haiti, the Spokesman reported that the United Nations Transition Mission in Haiti (UNTMIH) was continuing to

coordinate search operations. Twenty-two divers had begun their search operations again this morning. They had brought back 26 bodies, in addition to the 25 bodies found yesterday afternoon after the accident. They were now trying to move the boat to facilitate the recovery of the bodies still trapped in the boat. The Secretary-General was saddened by the tragedy. He regretted the loss of life and expressed his condolences to the families and relatives of the victims, as well as to the Government of Haiti.

The Security Council was briefed this morning by Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Spokesman said. Her topic was UNHCR operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mrs. Ogata had finished her presentation and was now taking questions from Council members. She would address the press immediately after her briefing, at the stakeout position outside the Council.

The second item on the Council's agenda today was the situation in Iraq, he said. Before it was the report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of the "oil-for-food" programme in the first 90 days of the second 180-day period. The issue was whether to rollover the balance of oil sales from the first 90 days, which had fallen short of the $1.07 billion ceiling. He understood that the United Kingdom would present a draft resolution on that item.

Also on Iraq, Mr. Eckhard said that Richard Butler, the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission set up under Security Council resolution 687 (1991) in connection with the disposal of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (UNSCOM), had completed his special mission and had left Baghdad. He had had three "tête-à-tête" meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Tarik Aziz, in order to evaluate the work programme agreed upon last July. Mr. Butler reported some progress on technical discussions concerning the accounting of missiles and special warheads, but more information was needed. Also discussed was the result of the analysis by UNSCOM on the remnants of missile warheads, about which additional analysis was needed. Regarding biological weapons, Mr. Aziz promised Mr. Butler to provide full information on the subject within the next 48 hours, which UNSCOM would verify over the course of some months. Mr. Butler would be in New York tomorrow.

Concerning the human rights investigative mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Eckhard said that the United Nations team yesterday had sent a letter to Richard Etienne Mbaya, the team's chief contact within the Congolese Government and the Minister for National Reconstruction and Emergency Relief, requesting a meeting to discuss the details of the mission's first field trip. The reason for the request was to review the team's security, which was a responsibility of the Congolese Government. Therefore, some "co-planning" was required. There had been no response from Minister Mbaya as of one hour ago, but a reply confirming a meeting for tomorrow was expected by this evening. The team hoped to travel to the field on Thursday. The team would be deployed in stages, with security and forensic experts leaving on Thursday, they hoped, followed some days later by a group of three or four others, and

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finally, by the main party. Two of the three investigators, Andrew Chigovera (Zimbabwe) and Reed Brody (United States), would go with the "second or third wave".

Mr. Eckhard said that exactly at the time of the briefing yesterday, the Secretary-General's report on the situation in Tajikistan had been issued, "but let me flag it for you, today". In his report, the Secretary-General recommended that the Security Council extend the mandate of the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) by six months, but with a revised mandate to meet the requests by the Tajik parties in implementing the general peace agreement that they had reached. The Secretary-General also recommended the strengthening of the civilian and administrative components of the Mission, as well as the military component from its current level of 45 military observers to 120. A closed meeting of the troop contributors would be held this afternoon at 3:30 p.m. in Conference Room 1.

Concerning the situation in Congo-Brazzaville, the Spokesman said he had spoken to Mohamed Sahnoun, the Joint United Nations/ Organization of African Unity (OAU) Special Representative for the Great Lakes Region. Mr. Sahnoun was in Libreville this morning. Late yesterday, Pascal Lissouba, President of the Congo, took a unilateral action and named Bernard Kolelas -- parliamentary representative and Mayor of the city of Brazzaville and Chairman of the National Mediation Committee -- as the new Prime Minister. That was not done in consultation with the mediators or with the former President, Denis Sassou Nguesso.

The Spokesman said that Mr. Sahnoun and the President of Gabon, Hadj Omar Bongo, hoped to convene a meeting on Friday of the International Mediation Committee at the level of heads of State. Those included many of the nations of the region: Senegal, Mali, Benin, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and, of course, Gabon, with President Bongo as Chairman. They intended to add to the group two new members: Congo- Kinshasa and Angola.

The Spokesman said that Nepal would become the tenth nation to sign a memorandum of understanding formalizing its participation in the United Nations stand-by arrangements for peacekeeping operations. The signing ceremony would take place tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. in the Office of the Under- Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Bernard Miyet. The Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations, Narendra Bikram Shah, would sign the memorandum for his country and Mr. Miyet would sign it for the United Nations. The contact in the Spokesman's Office for additional information on the matter was Hiro Ueki.

Regarding a question asked yesterday about the mission of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, Mr. Eckhard understood his office had provided the journalist with some information, but said for the record that Mr. Brahimi had just completed a visit to Saudi

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Arabia, where he held consultations with the authorities there on the situation in Afghanistan. He was now travelling to India for a three-day visit, then on to Tokyo, London, Rome and Paris before returning to New York on 22 September.

Mr. Eckhard reminded correspondents that the Fiftieth Annual DPI/NGO Conference was starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow in the General Assembly Hall. The Secretary-General would speak, as well as the Assembly President, Razali Ismail (Malaysia). Ruth Cardoso, the First Lady of Brazil, was the keynote speaker, and Mrs. Ogata had been added to the list of speakers.

In a series of announcements, the Spokesman related the following: the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva had concluded its 1997 session today. A press release from Geneva was available in his Office, "for those of you who follow disarmament affairs". Zambia had become the eighty-fifth Member State to pay in full its assessed contributions for the 1997 regular budget, with a cheque for $106,508. The number of countries that had paid in full by this time last year was almost the same as this year. Qatar had become the ninety- ninth Member State to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention. The ratification took place on 3 September, but for various, complicated reasons, confirmation was not received until today. The Spokesman's Office also had available a summary from Sarajevo of the daily press briefing by the spokesman for the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alexander Ivanko, concerning events in Banja Luka.

Mr. Eckhard reminded correspondents that Yukio Hatoyama, member of the Japanese House of Representatives and Co-Leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, would hold a press conference at 5 p.m. today in room S-226 on an item entitled "An Agenda for Empowerment". He would be accompanied by four other parliamentarians from his party. On Wednesday, at 11 a.m. also in room S-226, Radmila Milentijevic, Minister for Information of the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia, would hold a press conference on the latest information on the parliamentary and presidential elections in Serbia, with the focus on the role of the media, and the new Law of Information of Serbia.

A correspondent asked if the Secretary-General, on his visit to Switzerland, had touched upon allegations that the Swiss had funds given to them by Germany during the Second World War that were not being returned to their original owners. Mr. Eckhard said that "no", the Secretary-General had not raised that matter nor had anyone raised it with him. Although the Secretary-General had a few private meetings, the record of his open meetings did not include any mention of that item.

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