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, told correspondents at today's press briefing that the Secretary-General had just completed his address to the staff on United Nations Staff Day. Events began today at 10 a.m. with a security honour guard honouring civilian and military personnel who had fallen in the service of the Organization. The text of the Secretary- General's statement was available in the Spokesman's Office.

The Security Council this morning had adopted its report to the General Assembly on its activities for the past year, Mr. Eckhard said. The Council had also taken action on the situation in Tajikistan in response to the Secretary-General's report on the matter. Acting unanimously, the Council voted to extend for a period of two months the current mandate of the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT). The Secretary-General's report recommended expanding the mission in order to deal with the new peace agreement, but the Council decided on a two-month extension at the existing levels, with a provision to monitor progress.

In that connection, the Secretary-General was pleased with the return to Dushanbe yesterday of the leader of the United Tajik Opposition, Sayed Abdullo Nuri. His return signalled that the work of the Commission on National Reconciliation, chaired by Mr. Nuri, could get started, and that the implementation of the General Peace Agreement could go forward. Upon his return to Dushanbe, Mr. Nuri met with the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rakhmonov. The Council put off until 3 p.m. today its consideration of the "oil-for-food" programme for Iraq. He understood that agreement had been reached, and that a resolution modifying the conditions for the sale of oil under the programme would be adopted.

Turning to the Secretary-General's appointments, Mr. Eckhard said that the Secretary-General had met at 10:30 a.m. with Hennadiy Udovenko, the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, who was expected to be elected President of the fifty-second session of the General Assembly. [A press kit from the Department of Public Information (DPI) on the upcoming session was available at the documents counter.] During this morning's meeting, the Foreign Minister had handed over a cheque for $5 million. That country's annual contribution to the regular budget of the United Nations was $11.6 million, and its current outstanding contributions were among the largest at $251 million.

The Secretary-General's investigative mission on human rights to the Democratic Republic of the Congo had had another meeting this morning with representatives of various ministries, he said. There were continued discussions of the time and space and scope of the mission, as well as the role of the Liaison Committee. There still was no agreement between the United Nations and the Government representatives on those subjects. The

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objections raised by the Congolese Government "continued to pose a serious problem to the independence of the team's work", he said.

The team members were impatient and anxious to get into the field, he went on. They had to schedule yet another meeting with the Government to try to resolve those matters. That meeting was now set for Monday, which meant that the team's plan to set off tomorrow had been postponed again because of those problems with the Government. In the meantime, while the team was waiting in Kinshasa to resolve those issues, they had sent a team of four people to the Loukelela refugee camp in Congo-Brazzaville to interview refugees there. That group was expected to return to Kinshasa this evening.

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee, a policy-making group composed of the heads of all United Nations humanitarian agencies and a consortium of non- governmental organizations, met yesterday in New York. The Committee had issued the following statement:

"The Inter-Agency Standing Committee is gravely concerned over the erosion of respect for humanitarian principles and human rights which increasingly affects humanitarian operations in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. In this connection, the Committee endorses the decision taken by the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to suspend her Office's protection and assistance activities for Rwandese refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Committee agrees that those activities should be resumed only after guarantees have been received from the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that humanitarian principles will be respected and the security of staff ensured.

"The Committee calls upon all parties in the region to ensure access to affected populations, the security of humanitarian workers and respect for human rights and international humanitarian law. UNHCR, other concerned humanitarian agencies and human rights observers must be permitted full access to refugees who have returned to their countries of origin to ensure that their rights and safety are respected. In addition, the Committee urges all parties to support the current investigation into allegations of human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo." The text of the statement was available in the Spokesman's Office.

Mr. Eckhard said that the report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMBIH) (document S/1997/694) had been issued today, on the eve of the municipal elections in Bosnia scheduled for tomorrow and Sunday. It was a progress report that summarized the activities of the Mission, and provided an overview of the Organization's activities in Bosnia. Also available was a press statement from the Office of the High Representative, Carlos Westendorp, dated 11 September, concerning the elections.

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In other announcements, Mr. Eckhard said that his Office had received a press release from Arusha concerning the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Prosecution motions for orders for an extension of the provisional detention in the cases of five persons arrested in Nairobi in July would be heard on Monday. There was a limitation on the length of time those people could be held before charges were formally brought against them, and that time could be extended. The fourth round of talks on the situation in Western Sahara would get under way this weekend in Houston, Texas, under the direction of the Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, James Baker III. No statement was expected at the beginning of the talks, although Mr. Baker routinely addressed the press afterwards. The Spokesman's Office would seek confirmation on Sunday that those talks had started as scheduled.

On the situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the United Nations food agencies were alarmed by the catastrophic impact of drought and typhoons on crops in that country, Mr. Eckhard said. In a report on a food assessment mission to that country at the end of August, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) expressed alarm over food shortages. "These catastrophic events", they said, "will undoubtedly have a serious and long-reaching repercussion in the country's already grave food supplies." A second joint mission would go to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea next month to evaluate the prospects for the harvest. A press release on the matter was available.

Mr. Eckhard said that the Secretary-General was going to dash down to Cedar Crest College in Pennsylvania tomorrow to deliver an address. He would be welcomed by College President Dorothy Blaney, with whom he served on the Board of Trustees of the United Nations International School in New York.

The Czech Republic had become the seventh State to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), Mr Eckhard said. The other six countries which had ratified were: Fiji, Qatar, Uzbekistan, Japan, Federated States of Micronesia and Mongolia. There were 146 signatories to that Treaty. El Salvador had become the eighty-sixth Member State to be paid in full to the 1997 regular United Nations budget with a cheque for $106,508. The status of outstanding contributions as of 31 August was more than $2.6 billion. The monthly summary of troop contributions to peacekeeping operations was out a couple of days ago, and available to anyone who had missed it.

Mr. Eckhard drew attention to the forthcoming press conferences to be held in room S-226: at 3 p.m. today, Prince Sisowatch Sirirath, Permanent Representative of Cambodia to the United Nations, would discuss his country's delegation to the fifty-second session of the General Assembly. There were conflicting claims on that credentials fight, which the Assembly would have to deal with after the opening of its next session. On Monday, Razali Ismail (Malaysia), the outgoing President of the General Assembly, would hold his closing press conference at 10 a.m. Then, Anthony Woodfield, the Senior Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and

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Development (UNCTAD), would launch the 1997 Trade and Development Report at 11 a.m. The Permanent Representative of Portugal, Antonio Monteiro, would be joined by the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, Pierre Sane, in a press conference at 11:30 a.m.

A correspondent asked for a breakdown of United Nations staff killed in action. Mr. Eckhard said that his office had great difficulty last year developing a casualty database dating back to 1947 -- there were duplicate names, and names with the first names second, and the last names first. He hoped that that had been cleaned up by now and he would check with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations on the status. The data was to have been on the website, but he believed that was still "under construction". The database was not off by many, but there were a few lingering cases that could not be confirmed.

Asked to provide further detail on the differences in the Congo, Mr. Eckhard said that it was agreed that there would be a committee set up by the Congolese Government to relate to the investigative team. There were differing views about what the role of that committee should be, for example. There continued to be a disagreement over the scope of the work of the team. He felt that the entire Congo should be "our field of operations", and the Congolese Government was trying to restrict the team to the eastern Congo. That had been one of the terms of the investigative team of the Human Rights Commission, but was not the intent of the second team. The annex to the Secretary-General's letter of 15 July, made clear that the Secretary-General's team wanted access to the whole country.

Finally, there was the issue of the timeframe, he said. The Government had specific dates by which it wanted the investigation confined. Their termination date was 17 May 1997 -- the date of the creation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was not comfortable with that restriction, either. The Government wanted as the opening date for the investigation, 1 March 1993, with which the United Nations agreed.

Samsiah Abdul-Majid, spokeswoman for the President of the General Assembly, Razali Ismail (Malaysia), noted that it was her last briefing before the commencement of the next session of the General Assembly. She said, "I want to thank each and every one of you: members of the correspondents corp at the United Nations and colleagues, especially Fred's team, and all those behind the scene, the cameramen, the sound people, and people in the Press Section who do all the briefing notes." She had had a good year, and had learned a lot. Most of all she hoped she had been useful to the correspondents.

As the Spokesman had announced, the President of the General Assembly would hold a press conference at 10 a.m. on Monday, 15 September, in room S-226, she said. The concluding session of the Assembly would start at 11 a.m. on Monday. There was a long list of items in the Journal today to be undertaken at the concluding Assembly. "But, don't be worried, because a lot of those items are

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just for procedural action to close the items for the fifty-first session", she said. There were a few requiring action. One of them was the report of the Security Council reform working group which contained a draft by which the Assembly would decide that the working group continue its work and report to the Assembly at the end of the fifty-second session. Ambassador Razali would be on hand at Monday's press conference to answer questions concerning the current status of the working group.

Ms. Abdul-Majid also drew attention to a draft resolution concerning the supplement to An Agenda for Peace (document A/51/L.78) to be introduced by the Chairman of the informal open-ended working group on An Agenda for Peace, Ambassador Jose Luis Barbosa Leao Monteiro of Cape Verde. The text contained two annexes. The first annex included sections on coordination between the United Nations and States, including coordination within the Secretariat, cooperation with regional arrangements and agencies, and cooperation and dialogue between the United Nations and non-governmental organizations.

The second annex was on the question of imposed sanctions, she said. Highlights from that annex included the following: sanctions should be resorted to with utmost caution when other peaceful options provided by the United Nations Charter were inadequate. They should be established with clear objectives, with a provision for regular review and precise conditions for being lifted. The Council should define the timeframe for sanctions regime, and could also consider the possibility of introducing a range of sanctions and lifting them progressively as each target was reached. The purpose of sanctions was to modify the behaviour of a party that was threatening international peace and security and not to punish or exact retribution. Sanctions regimes should be commensurate with those objectives.

Continuing from that draft, the spokeswoman said that unintended adverse side effects on the civilian populations should be minimized by making humanitarian exceptions in Council resolutions. Guidelines for the formulation of such exceptions should be formulated. Foodstuffs, medicines, medical supplies, basic medical and agricultural equipment, and educational items should be exempted. The Council, Assembly and other relevant organs should intensify efforts to address the special economic problems of third States affected by sanctions regimes. And, Council resolutions should include more precise mandates for sanctions committees.

Ms. Abdul-Majid said that the plenary also would make an oral decision to endorse the recommendation of the Secretary-General that three Judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia whose terms would expire on 16 November should continue to serve beyond that date in order to complete an ongoing trial. That recommendation concerned three Judges: Adolphus Karibi-Whyte (Nigeria), Elizabeth Odio Benito (Costa Rica) and Saad Saood Jan (Pakistan). The Security Council had already endorsed the recommendation of the Secretary-General on 27 August.

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Also before the plenary on Monday was the report of the working group on the financial situation of the United Nations, she said. The Assembly would take note of the work of the group on the understanding that it would be resumed when appropriate, after consultations with Member States. There were a number of items from the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary), several of which were still being discussed. That Committee would meet this afternoon. Among the documents already available was a draft decision to exempt the application of Article 19 of the Charter to Liberia, Tajikistan and the Comoros, permitting them to vote through the fifty-second session. The failure of the countries to pay was due to conditions beyond their control. Currently, there were 14 countries affected by Article 19.

Also before the Committee was a decision to authorize the Secretary- General to make final payments on the construction of additional conference facilities in Addis Ababa, she said. There was a resolution on the use of the optical disk system and its availability to Member States, and a decision to continue considering the report of the Secretary-General on the activities of Internal Oversight Services at the next session. The question of gratis personnel was still under consideration.

The spokeswoman also reviewed Tuesday afternoon's schedule, the opening of the fifty-second session of the General Assembly. The Chairman of the Malaysian delegation, Ambassador Razali, who was the current President of the General Assembly, would open the session. Following the appointment of the Credentials Committee, the new President would be elected, followed by a statement. The first meeting of the plenary would then conclude, to be followed by six consecutive meetings of the Main Committees for the election of their chairmen. Those would be chaired by the President of the General Assembly. Immediately following the election of the chairmen, the second meeting of the General Assembly would convene for the purpose of electing the twenty-one Vice-Presidents of the session. Then, the President would announce the meeting the following day of the General Committee of the Assembly to consider recommendations of items to be included in the agenda of the fifty- second session.

"All the best for the fifty-second session", she concluded.

Mr. Eckhard then introduced Marjorie Williams-Newman, Deputy Director of Programmes for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). She would present four new television spots on child labour, produced together with the International Labour Organization (ILO) for the upcoming International Conference on Child Labour in Oslo, Norway from 27 to 30 October.

Ms. Williams-Newman said that child labour was a big issue for UNICEF, and of growing importance in that body's work. The collaboration with ILO had recently led to the production of four 30-second spots, which spoke for themselves. They were part of a public awareness campaign on the issue of

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child labour. The Conference, hosted by the Government of Norway at the end of October, was chosen as the venue for those spots. Today was a preview.

The spots would be available shortly to television stations, she said. Among those stations which had expressed interest in airing them were CNN International, CBS, NBC, Spanish language channels, Orbit Television, Middle East Broadcasting, Asia Net in India and The Discovery Channel. The spots were available in English, French and Spanish, and an international language version which could be used with local languages. For the Conference, UNICEF would -- through the Voices of Youth Forum, an on-line discussion forum for children -- be providing access to the issues to be debated at the Conference. A group of young journalists would be part of the press corps attending the Conference.

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