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, began today's press briefing by informing correspondents that although the appointment of Elisabeth Rehn of Finland as Special Representative and Coordinator of United Nations Operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina had been announced, her appointment would become effective Friday and the Secretary-General wished to introduce her to correspondents.

Mr. Eckhard recalled that the Secretary-General had previously announced the appointment of the new Head of the Office of the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Mr. De Mello's predecessor, Yasushi Akashi, was leaving the Secretariat today after 40 years of service to the Organization. A statement -- attributable to the Secretary-General -- paying warm tribute to his friend and colleague of some 30 years was available in the Spokesman's Office.

Mr. Akashi had headed the Department of Public Information (DPI), the Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Department of Disarmament Affairs and was perhaps best known as the United Nations Special Representative on Cambodia, Mr. Eckhard said. He had also done yeoman's service in Yugoslavia as Special Representative, where Mr. Eckhard was privileged to have worked with him. Mr. Akashi was now returning to Japan, and the Secretary-General wished him every success.

Turning to Iraq, Mr. Eckhard said that an inspection team of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), headed by Inspector Scott Ritter, had been unable to conduct inspections today, as the Government of Iraq had not sent its officials to escort the team. It was standard practice for teams to be escorted by Iraqi officials, and when they did not turn up after half an hour, Mr. Ritter had called off today's inspection. However, several other inspection teams had been able to go out for regular inspections with Iraqi officials and there had been no significant problems with those teams.

Richard Butler, Executive Chairman of UNSCOM, was attending this morning's consultations of the Security Council on Iraq, Mr. Eckhard said. It was possible that he would see the press at the stake-out position outside the Security Council Chamber on his way out.

Concerning new oil contracts for the third phase of the "oil-for-food" programme for Iraq, Mr. Eckhard said that the United Nations oil overseers had approved five out of 25 oil contracts they had received up to now. The five contracts approved amounted to approximately 50 million barrels in total. Those contracts had been awarded to United States, French, Spanish and Russian companies.

The Security Council had taken up today the United Nations Mission of Observers in Prevlaka (UNMOP) and had extended that mission for six months, Mr. Eckhard said. Prevlaka was a strategic peninsula in the southernmost part of Croatia, he added.

Mr. Eckhard said that the Security Council had had its monthly meeting last night -- which as he had mentioned yesterday, had been in the form of a dinner -- hosted by the Permanent Representative of France, Alain Dejammet. The Council looked forward to the activities of the month.

Giving a bit of a preview of those activities, Mr. Eckhard said that the Council was expected to take up in the course of January the Secretary-General's reports on four peace-keeping operations. Those were: Prevlaka -- which had been done this morning -- Angola, Lebanon and Georgia. The mandates of those four operations would expire in the course of this month.

Today, also, the Security Council would receive the Secretary-General's report on Angola. That United Nations mission would expire on 30 January, and one of the recommendations of the Secretary-General was to extend the mandate of the mission for three months, until 30 April. A draft resolution on the mission's mandate should soon be prepared by the three observer States of the Angolan peace process -- Portugal, Russian Federation and the United States -- on the basis of the recommendations of the Secretary-General.

On the subject of Angola, Mr. Eckhard said that the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Alioune Blondin Beye, had undergone heart bypass surgery in Gissen, Germany. Mr. Eckhard said, "We are told that the operation was successful. It may take him some time to recover, but once he recovers, he is expected to go back to Angola and resume his work there, and the Secretary-General wishes him a speedy recovery."

[The Secretary-General then introduced Elisabeth Rehn of Finland as the new Special Representative and Coordinator of United Nations Operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The press conference of the Secretary-General and of Ms. Rehn is being issued separately.]

Following the press conference, Mr. Eckhard continued his briefing. He said that the Secretary-General's reports on Lebanon and Georgia should be available to the Security Council by 22 January and decisions on the respective mandates should be taken by 29 January.

The Council had received the second report of the Member States participating in the Inter-African Mission to Monitor the Implementation of the Bangui Agreements, Mr. Eckhard continued. It would revert to that issue later in the month or, possibly, in the beginning of February, after receiving a report by the Secretary-General following the recent visit to the Central African Republic by his Personal Envoy, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Hedi Annabi.

Mr. Eckhard said that the Council would also receive this week a report by the Secretary-General containing detailed information on the progress of the identification operation in Western Sahara. That report would determine whether the transitional period would start on 7 June as planned.

In other business, Mr. Eckhard said that the United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) would be completing its mission successfully on 15 January. That would be the first United Nations peacekeeping operation to complete its mission successfully since the last successful mission in Guatemala earlier this year. The UNTAES would be succeeded by a follow-on civilian police mission on 16 January. Copies of an information note on UNTAES prepared by the Department of Public Information (DPI) were available to correspondents in the Spokesman's Office.

The United Nations and the representatives of Ted Turner had agreed in principle to the arrangements for launching the billion dollar Turner Fund in the first quarter of 1998, Mr. Eckhard said. While the lawyers were still "dotting the i's and crossing the t's", final agreement on the establishment of a foundation on the Turner side and a trust fund on the United Nations side to administer the money was expected to be reached shortly. Timothy Wirth had been announced as the head of the Turner Foundation. He would host what might be described as an inaugural dinner tonight at the Harvard Club in New York for the Secretary-General, the Deputy Secretary-General and senior United Nations officials, as well as officials of the Turner Fund.

Mr. Eckhard said that the way it was expected to work was that the United Nations trust fund would solicit proposals from programmes and agencies of the United Nations system, evaluate them, sharpen their focus in consultation with the proposer of the idea, then submit certain ones to the Turner side. If the Turner side approved, it would authorize the money to be transferred into the United Nations trust fund and that project would be launched.

Tomorrow, for the entire day, representatives of the United Nations side and the Turner side would explore the remaining outstanding issues, get to know each other and, basically, launch the new project, Mr. Eckhard said.

There was one additional signatory to the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings yesterday, Belgium, Mr. Eckhard said. Belgium had not been mentioned during yesterday's briefing. The countries mentioned yesterday were Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, Canada, Russian Federation, France and the United States.

On contributions, Iceland and Ireland had paid in full their assessed contributions to the regular budget for 1998, Mr. Eckhard said. That was

$336,521 for Iceland and $2,345,129 for Ireland. So far, seven Member States had paid in full, as compared with four States on this date a year ago.

On Haiti, Mr. Eckhard said that Julian Harston had begun work today as Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti and Head of the Mission for the United Nations Civilian Police in Haiti (MIPONUH).

Mr. Eckhard said that some correspondents might have noticed that the Peace Bell was missing. Leaks and some cracking in the structure under the bell had been noticed, so a process of demolition had been started to allow new waterproofing and concrete finishing to take place. The bell would be temporarily relocated to the lawn area to the south of the General Assembly building and would be returned to its traditional location by August of this year.

Asked by a correspondent where the meeting between the representatives of the Turner Fund and the United Nations was to take place, Mr. Eckhard said that it would be at the offices of Time-Warner at Rockefeller Plaza.

Asked by the same correspondent whether more details on the Secretary-General's mention of a follow-up to the Carnegie report and an event on 5 February were available, Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General felt it would be useful if members of the Security Council could interrupt their daily rat race to reflect on some of the issues raised in the Carrington and Carnegie Corporation reports. Mr. Eckhard said that while he knew that it had been in the Secretary-General's head to mention that informally at last night's dinner, he was not sure if he had actually done so.

Another correspondent asked Mr. Eckhard whether or not UNTAES could be called a successful mission when not all of the indigenous Serbian population in eastern Croatia had been reintegrated -- something like 100,000 Serbs had been evicted or forced to leave. Mr. Eckhard said, "I think the number is more like 20,000 and it is even hard to be specific with that because there is a very fluid border. Some people took furniture and personal belongings over into the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as insurance and then returned to their homes in eastern Croatia. So while there has been some movement of population, the bulk of the Serb population has stayed, and as long as that remains the case, I think we have to say that UNTAES successfully oversaw a rather dicey and difficult transition."

Asked about the recent eviction of Serbian families from Beli Manistir and whether the International Police was reporting on those incidents, Mr. Eckhard said that he had not seen a report on those six families and would have to check on it and get back to the correspondent who had asked the question.

A correspondent asked why there were so many Americans on the inspection teams in Iraq. What did they bring to the monitoring efforts there and why was it so important and controversial for the Iraqis? Mr. Eckhard said, "The Commission needs experts in weapons of mass destruction. There are a limited number of countries in the world who have those experts or have a surplus of those experts that they can lend to the United Nations to carry out these inspections. There is the additional factor that the official language of the mission is English. When you get non-English speaking inspectors you often have to get an interpreter, pay an additional salary, do an extra recruitment. But they are more than happy to hire interpreters if that is what is needed to broaden the spectrum of participants. But I think given the concentration of the expertise in the area of these weapons of mass destruction, you would expect a large number to be coming from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Russian Federation. These are the main source countries."

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