TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN AT HEADQUARTERS, 14 JANUARY 1998

Press Release
SG/SM/6439

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN AT HEADQUARTERS, 14 JANUARY 1998

THE SECRETARY-GENERAL: Good morning. It looks as if this is becoming a daily event, but I will tell you I am not going to be bothering you like this for too long.

I would like this morning to introduce Ambassador Dhanapala, who is going to be Head of the newly re-established Department of Disarmament Affairs. He comes to us with considerable experience in the field. He has been active in disarmament matters for many, many years, and I think most of you will remember him as the Sri Lankan representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. He has also been a leading figure in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and was President of the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995. And that led to an historic event, when the Treaty was indefinitely extended. He was also, prior to that, the Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in Geneva and, more recently, a member of the Canberra Commission. He is not only a disarmament expert, but also an outstanding diplomat, having been the representative of his Government in Geneva and, more recently, Ambassador to Washington.

I would ask Mr. Dhanapala to say a few words.

MR. DHANAPALA: Thank you, Mr. Secretary-General, for that generous introduction.

It remains for me to say how proud and honoured I am to be a member of the senior management team working in the United Nations, particularly in the field of disarmament, in which I have had a considerable part of my diplomatic career. It is a great honour to serve under the leadership of the Secretary- General as the United Nations, in its reformed mode, goes into the twenty- first century.

I am particularly happy that the Department of Disarmament Affairs has been re-established after a lapse of six years. It grasps the unique opportunity for the United Nations to play a leading role in multilateral disarmament, particularly in this period after the cold war ended.

The reforms that the Secretary-General has caused to happen in the United Nations system also involve refocusing on priorities, and I am happy that the Department has been re-established with the relatively small budget of about $13 million in a gross total of about $2.52 billion. But at the same time we will continue to fulfil the mandates that had been given to us by the Member States.

I am also happy that I will be working with a dedicated team of persons in the Department, many of whom I have known, both as a member of the Sri Lanka delegation and also as Director of UNIDIR. I have the greatest respect for the staff of the United Nations, with whom I have worked for a long time.

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The expertise in the Department, in particular, I hope will help us perform the functions that have been entrusted to us.

QUESTION: We welcome you and congratulate you, Sir, on your accession to your new post.

My first question is, since you have a six-year lapse to cover, where do you intend to start? Are you starting from scratch and building up?

MR. DHANAPALA: No. Clearly, I have to build on what has already been done in the Centre for Disarmament Affairs in the last six years. The staff are a very able and dedicated group of people, and I look forward to working with them and with my other colleagues in the United Nations system. The Geneva Conference on Disarmament, as well as the other multilateral bodies that exist, continue to be supported by the Department and we will therefore go on with our work that we have been doing in the Centre.

We will try to expand the agenda of multilateral disarmament. There are a number of challenges that have arisen, and the Secretary-General has already signalled some of the issues, such as the question of conventional disarmament, which we will work on, particularly in the area of small arms and light weapons.

QUESTION: When the proposal of the creation of the Department was being discussed in the Fifth Committee, there was a coalition of 21 countries that expressed strong reservations and fears that the creation of the Department in New York would undermine the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. What is your response to this?

MR. DHANAPALA: I believe those fears were misplaced, and the Secretary- General has assuaged them with the repeated statements that he has made and the Spokesman has made on his behalf.

I would like to recall the fact that, for many years, between 1983 and 1992, a strong Department of Disarmament Affairs coexisted with the institutions in Geneva, particularly the Conference on Disarmament, and there was no conflict of interest. Indeed, the synergy that it produced helped advance the cause of disarmament.

I believe, similarly, there is no contradiction in terms between having a DDA [Department of Disarmament Affairs] here and a CD [Conference on Disarmament] in Geneva. We can work very harmoniously together, and I am sure that we will, as we have always done, continue to support the work of the CD, as well as, of course, the First Committee and the Disarmament Commission.

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QUESTION: Again, going back to the concerns, a number of countries are also worried that first of all an enhanced Department would downgrade nuclear disarmament in favour of conventional disarmament, and on conventional, would go beyond its assigned mandate to be more assertive on some of these issues, particularly small arms. How do you plan to address those concerns?

MR. DHANAPALA: First, the addendum that was issued by the Secretariat on 14 October, I believe, made it very clear that nuclear disarmament and the question of weapons of mass destruction remain a priority. The Final Document of SSOD I [first special session devoted to disarmament] of 1978 remains the high-water mark of a multilateral consensus on disarmament issues, and it states very clearly that nuclear issues are the priority issues. But we must also work at the same time in a kind of constructive parallelism with other issues, such as conventional disarmament and landmines, as has been recently discovered, because of the groundswell of public opinion on these issues. And of course there are a host of other areas in which work continues to be done.

QUESTION: The story of the day — this is a tough one, kind of -— is that the Iraqi Ambassador in a letter yesterday denied that Iraq was testing a chemical and biological agent on human beings in a prison. The United Nations Special Commission people went to this prison. Does it shock you that these reports are potentially possible, that the Special Commission is trying to prove this, that human beings were tested in 1994-1995 and they just can't find the paperwork?

THE SECRETARY-GENERAL: Well, I'm not sure that I'm in a position to go into all that detail, and in fact the letter from the Ambassador, the one I have seen, hadn't covered these details. There may be another one. I saw him yesterday, and we discussed the issue of the conflict with the inspectors. At that point, what he was contesting was the figures. Remember, I had told you that there were 44 team members altogether, and that of that number, we have nine Americans. He disputes that figure and felt that the number was considerably lower and that it was altogether a maximum of about 20, and even then not all of them were inspectors -— some of them were translators or interpreters -— and therefore they are maintaining their position that the team was unbalanced. Of course, the Council is continuing its discussions, and we will need to wait to see what action or decisions they take.

QUESTION: You're meeting with Secretary of State Albright tonight. What are you going to say if she tells you the U.S. has decided to go it alone militarily?

THE SECRETARY-GENERAL: I will listen and discuss.

QUESTION: General Dallaire waived his immunity. Can you give us more specifics on what the limitations are for him when he goes to Arusha?

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THE SECRETARY-GENERAL: I think he is going to testify. As you know, we have agreed that he can testify, and he will testify as to the specific case before the Tribunal. But we are hoping that this is not going to be a fishing expedition and a trial of the whole peacekeeping process and all the other Governments and countries that participated in it. There is a specific case before the Court, and he will answer questions on that specific case.

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