DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

[Incorporates briefing by spokesman for General Assembly President.]

Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, began today's noon briefing by announcing that the Secretary-General had bilateral meetings with various heads of delegations attending the special session of the General Assembly on drugs. Those meetings were taking place throughout today.

His first meeting was with President Emomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan, Mr. Eckhard said. The Secretary-General discussed with the President the recent decision of the Tajik Parliament to adopt an act which would effectively prohibit the Islamic Revival Party, the largest component of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), from participation in the country's political life. The Secretary-General expressed serious concern that if enacted into law, that decision would remove one of the main pillars of the General Peace Agreement, which was the legalization of banned political parties following the UTO's public declaration of the disbandment of its armed forces.

The Spokesman went on to say that the Secretary-General voiced the expectation that the Conciliation Commission established by President Rakhmonov would resolve the matter in the spirit of the General Agreement signed between the Tajik Government and the United Tajik Opposition. (See Press Release SG/SM/6590.)

Turning to other matters, Mr. Eckhard said that the 661 Committee, which oversees sanctions on Iraq, approved 51 contracts under Phase III, according to the weekly report on the implementation of the "oil-for-food" programme. The Committee put seven contracts on hold and blocked none. Five hundred and fifty-two applications had been submitted to the Committee to date, of which 519 had been approved. That was a 94 per cent approval rate.

Total oil proceeds now stood at $1.62 billion, he added. Of that amount, $1.03 billion had been made available to finance humanitarian supplies. The United Nations overseers reported that six new oil contracts were approved under Phase IV, and two contracts were pending. The contracts approved were with Russian, Spanish, French and Swiss companies. The total volume of oil contracts approved amounted to 34.5 million barrels.

On another matter, the Spokesman said that Mary Robinson, High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued a statement on Kosovo this morning in Geneva in which she said that she was deeply disturbed by continuing violence in the province. She urgently called on the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as well as the leaders of the Kosovo Albanian community to curb the spiral of violence and to spare the population from more suffering. Mrs. Robinson once again called upon the Government of the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia to allow her office to establish a constant presence in Pristina. The text of her statement was available in room 378.

Mr. Eckhard said that the Deputy Secretary-General was still in Ouagadougou at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit. The Spokesman's Office had put out the statement she delivered yesterday. She had a series of bilateral meetings today, including talks with the Foreign Ministers of Eritrea and of Ethiopia to discuss the fighting between those two countries which, it was understood, resumed this morning. She met with President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and the Foreign Ministers of Congo-Brazzaville and of the Sudan. She also met with Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who was also attending the Summit.

Nane Annan, wife of the Secretary-General, would present the awards for an international painting competition for young people tomorrow, 10 June, at 1 p.m. in the Visitors' Lobby of the General Assembly building, the Spokesman said. The competition was co-sponsored by the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP) and International Paint Pals, a programme of the Youth Art Connection and the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Atlanta.

Entrants were asked to contribute paintings depicting their concerns about drug abuse, he continued. The four winners were from the Russian Federation, Brazil, Namibia and Thailand; the permanent representatives of those countries would accept the awards on behalf of the young artists. The winning paintings were part of an exhibition of 120 paintings chosen from among 3,000 entries submitted by schoolchildren around the world. That exhibit would be on display in the Visitors' Lobby through 17 July.

Mr. Eckhard said that the UNHCR reported that, as of the first week of June, new arrivals from Sierra Leone in Guinea were continuing at about the same rate as in May. Some 6,000 new arrivals were counted during the first week. That information, as well as an update on Kosovo, were contained in the UNHCR briefing note available in the Office of the Spokesman.

On Rwanda, he said that the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that it had begun an emergency distribution for more than 100,000 internally displaced persons in north-west Rwanda where humanitarian agencies had very limited access for nearly six months. A press release on that was available in the Spokesman's Office.

The Spokesman said that Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), suggested yesterday in an address to an experts meeting that tourism could replace the role of textiles and garments as a starting point for economic take-off in many developing countries. Those countries could exploit the potential of tourism to integrate into the international economy, rather than following the

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traditional path of industrialization, Mr. Ricupero said. Correspondents could get an UNCTAD press release containing further details on that subject.

On treaty ratification and signature, Mr. Eckhard said that the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Bolivia, Javier Murillo de la Rocha, today signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. Mexico's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Rosario Green, was expected to sign the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change this afternoon before President Ernesto Zedillo presented the Secretary-General with Mexico's instrument of ratification of the anti- landmine Convention. Yesterday, Denmark also ratified the landmine ban. Updates on the full status of those treaties were available in the Office of the Spokesman.

Headquarters press conferences were too numerous to mention and correspondents could see them on the bulletin board, the Spokesman said. There were two United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) announcements, first the postponement of a briefing on United States anti-drug policy that was to have been held at 1 p.m. today. Correspondents would be alerted when there was a fresh date. Second was a briefing and a question-and-answer period on India's nuclear policy in the UNCA Club at 3:45 p.m. today. Jaswant Singh, Deputy Chairman of India's Planning Commission and the Government's senior strategy and defence figure, would be giving that briefing.

Mr. Eckhard said he had asked Sandro Tucci, spokesman for ODCCP Executive Director Pino Arlacci, to join the briefing in case correspondents had further questions about the special session.

A correspondent asked how United Nations conferences around the world were scheduled to keep them from coinciding with events like the OAU Summit, a coincidence that had prevented the vast majority of African heads of State from attending the Drug Summit. Presumably there was quite a serious drug problem in Africa. The Spokesman said the United Nations published a year's calendar of events and conferences. When the clash with the OAU Summit occurred, the Organization worked with the regional body to find a way around it, but in the end that proved impossible so there was an unfortunate conflict. The United Nations tried to avoid those kinds of things, and it was very unusual for it to happen.

Another correspondent asked if there was any reaction to a statement yesterday by an official of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that NATO did not need a United Nations mandate to intervene in Kosovo. Mr. Eckhard said he had not seen that statement and had no comment on it.

Alex Taukatch, spokesman for General Assembly President Hennadiy Udovenko, referring to the clash in the date of the special session and the OAU Summit, said that the Assembly President had sent a letter to the OAU in an effort to avoid the overlap, but it was too late. The date of the special

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session had been widely known and was on the calendar. The decision regarding the OAU came subsequently.

Turning to the second day of the special session, the spokesman said that three Prime Ministers had spoken this morning and the general debate was continuing. For those closely following the list of speakers, there had been changes: the Philippines and Pakistan would be the last to speak this morning while Saint Lucia and Libya would be the last two delegations to speak this afternoon.

The Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole had just ended its work in Conference Room 3, the spokesman said. That Committee was charged with finalizing negotiations of the texts to be adopted by the General Assembly, which would happen on the last day of the special session. It was also reviewing the existing international drug control instruments as well as the strengthening of United Nations machinery for drug control. Yesterday afternoon, the Committee approved the three texts that would be adopted by the Assembly at the end of the session.

In the meantime, the Assembly President had been presiding over most of the meetings yesterday and today, Mr. Taukatch said. This morning he met with the head of the Vietnamese delegation, Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem, and with Myanmar's Minister for Home Affairs and Chairman of the Central Committee on Drug Abuse Control, Colonel Tin Hlaing. At noon, the President attended the official opening of the new Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations. At 6 p.m., he would host a reception in honour of heads of delegations attending the special session.

Mr. Taukatch said that the President was happy with a very substantive debate that was taking place in the special session. On the organizational side, most speakers were keeping to the time limit and everything was proceeding smoothly, except for a minor problem with cellular telephones. The President urged delegations this morning to stop their telephones from ringing in the General Assembly Hall to avoid such disruptions.

Mr. Taukatch drew attention to side events taking place. At 3 p.m., in Conference Room 2, there was the workshop on "The Media and Drugs" organized by the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention and the Department of Public Information (DPI), with the support of Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI-TV) and the Permanent Mission of Italy. At 10 a.m., in Conference Room 6, was a panel discussion on "Drugs and Productivity" organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., in Conference Room 5, was a panel discussion on "Drugs and Development", he added. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was the lead body on that. From 1:15 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. was a presentation by the Permanent Mission of Iran on "Transit of Illicit Drugs Through Iran". From 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., in Conference Room 6, was a panel discussion on "Drug Abuse and HIV/AIDS", organized by the Joint and

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Co-sponsored United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). At 3:30 p.m., there was a presentation by the Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom on "United Kingdom Drug Strategy".

Asked by a correspondent to explain why only three texts should be adopted while there were many more session documents, the spokesman said that the texts to be approved by the Assembly were one thing, and the documents before the session were a totally different thing. For instance, among the documents before the session was a report of an expert group that contained recommendations regarding enhancing the role of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) and enhanced financing for UNDCP. The main texts to be adopted by the Assembly were annexed to document A/S-20/4, including the political declaration.

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