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 noon briefing that Benon Sevan, the Executive Director of the United Nations Iraq Programme, was in London for a two-day conference on the oil-for-food programme. The conference had been organized by the presidency of the European Union -- the United Kingdom. Representatives of a variety of United Nations agencies participating in the oil-for-food programme were also attending.

Last Friday, before he left for London, Mr. Sevan had briefed the Security Council, highlighting the main points in the Secretary-General's letter of 15 April on Iraq's capacity to produce and export oil, the Spokesman said. The Secretary-General had recommended that Iraq be allowed to export up to $4 billion worth of oil in the next 180-day period. He had also asked for $300 million worth of spare parts and equipment to boost Iraq's capacity to export oil. He recommended that the Council consider the possibility of authorizing the United Nations oil overseers to approve contracts for spare parts, once such a list had been reviewed and finalized by the Council. Mr. Eckhard said he understood a Council member was working on a draft resolution, but he did not know when it would be taken up.

The President of the Security Council met with Iraq's Foreign Minister, Mohammed Al-Sahaf, this morning, the Spokesman said. Senior United Nations officials were expected to meet with him some time this week, but there was not as yet a firm programme. The Council would be taking up its periodic review of the sanctions against Iraq starting next Monday, 27 April.

Although the Council was not meeting today, it was scheduled to be briefed tomorrow by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, on her recent visit to the former Yugoslavia, as well as on the Great Lakes region of Africa, Mr. Eckhard said. The Council might also be briefed tomorrow by the Secretariat on the situation in the Central African Republic.

The Secretary-General was in California on the first part of a four-day visit to California and Texas, Mr. Eckhard said. At 8 a.m., he had a working breakfast with David Coulter, the President of the Bank of America, who is also the President of the World Affairs Council in California, as well as with other business leaders. The Secretary-General would address the World Affairs Council at lunch. The text of that address was available, but it was embargoed until delivery and should be checked against delivery. The theme was, "The United Nations in Our Daily Lives". The Secretary-General would go to the University of California at Berkeley this afternoon. Among other things, he would deliver an address there on "War, Peace and the United Nations". That text was also available, and also embargoed.

On Saturday, 18 April, "for the few of you brave enough to come in and sit through it," there had been a joint meeting of the Economic and Social Council and a number of the Ministers of the Bretton Woods institutions, who had just come from a Washington, D.C., meeting, Mr. Eckhard said. They discussed globalization, financial integration and other issues, including the Asian financial crisis. The meeting brought together Ministers from the world of development cooperation with Ministers of Finance. "Apparently, these two hardly ever speak to each other, but they did so on Saturday", he added. Also attending were the Managing Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

It had been the idea of the General Assembly, at least since the adoption of a 1996 resolution, that those two groups of experts should get together, the Spokesman said. The discussions were high-level, addressing the architecture of the international system dealing with monetary and financial matters, and with the need to adapt it to the new reality. Jan Pronk, Minister for Development Cooperation of the Netherlands, suggested that the Development Committee of the World Bank and the IMF be recomposed as a joint body of both Bretton Woods and the United Nations. Such a body could have a broader mandate that would include -- in addition to economic issues -- social, environmental and, to a certain extent, political dimensions. The Ministers considered how such crises as those currently gripping Asia could be prevented.

Mr. Eckhard said that Claire Short, the Secretary of State for International Development of the United Kingdom, had said this was the first generation to be able to integrate the goals identified by the big United Nations conferences over the past 10 or 15 years with such specific financial planning goals as reducing poverty and educating more children. Much of the documentation from the meeting was available in room 378, the Spokesman added.

The Commission on Sustainable Development began its annual session today, which would run through 1 May, Mr. Eckhard said. The Chairman of the Commission, Cielito Habito (Philippines), had briefed reporters this morning on the two main issues on the agenda of the Commission this year: "Bringing Business to the United Nations Table", and "Action to Avert a Freshwater Crisis". The agenda of those meetings was available in room 378.

The 1998 programme of exhumations of mass grave sites in the former Yugoslavia began today, the Spokesman said. A team of forensic experts from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia visited the first site, located on the plateau of the dam at Brnice, near Zvornik. Once the operation was completed, the forensic experts would move on to another site, the location of which had not yet been disclosed. A press release from the Tribunal was available in room 378.

Out today on the racks was a note by the Secretary-General on core resources for development, Mr. Eckhard said. The note was one of several

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 20 April 1998

documents that the General Assembly was to consider next week, when it resumed its discussion of United Nations reform on Monday, 27 April. Other reports had been issued on the utilization of the Development Account, a new concept of trusteeship, the "Millennium Assembly" that the Secretary-General was calling for in the year 2000 and the impact of pilot projects on budgetary practices.

Next Monday, the Secretary-General and the Deputy Secretary-General would address the Assembly plenary, Mr. Eckhard said. Alex Taukatch, spokesman for the President of the General Assembly, would attend the noon briefing tomorrow to provide more information on that meeting.

Asked for more details on Afghanistan and the Taliban's rejection of the United Nations negotiating team leader, Mr. Eckhard said the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs was trying to get a negotiating team into Afghanistan. They were at present not considering an alternative to Alfredo Witschi-Cestari (Venezuela), the Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan and head of the negotiating team on humanitarian action in Afghanistan. The team's agenda with the Taliban was as follows: the safety and integrity of United Nations personnel there; the new edict of the Taliban asking Muslim women working for the United Nations to be accompanied by male relatives at all times -- which was unacceptable; equal access to health and education services for girls and women in Afghanistan; and humanitarian access to regions under siege.

Asked when Lakhdar Brahimi, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan, would return to New York, Mr. Eckhard said he was due back on Wednesday, 22 April. He had been doing some follow-up work, and had done much of the groundwork upon which Ambassador Bill Richardson (United States) had based his peace initiative there. Mr. Brahimi would brief the Secretary- General and then the Security Council on his return.

Following the noon briefing, it was announced that Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) had issued a statement today requesting the immediate and unconditional release of 10 aid workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) currently being held hostage in Mogadishu, Somalia.

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