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, opened today's noon briefing by reporting that a World Food Programme (WFP) international staff member had been robbed and shot dead by unknown assailants on arrival at his Bujumbura [Burundi] home last night. His identity had not been disclosed because family members had yet to be notified.

He added that WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini, in Rome, and Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, had expressed deep sorrow on hearing of the senseless killing.

Mr. Eckhard then said that Mr. Vieira de Mello, who had briefed the press two days ago on the latest developments in United Nations humanitarian policy in Afghanistan, was meeting with representatives of that country's Taliban authorities. Efforts would be made to get correspondents a read-out of that meeting once it concluded.

The Spokesman said his Office had the transcript of the Secretary- General's press conference in Mexico City yesterday, as well as a statement issued by the United Nations Information Centre there following his meeting in the afternoon with representatives of human rights organizations in Mexico. On both occasions, the Secretary-General had reiterated his hope that the situation in Chiapas would be resolved peacefully and through dialogue.

As for the question of his personal involvement, the Secretary-General had said at the opening of the press conference that he trusted the misunderstandings had been laid to rest, Mr. Eckhard continued. "I have not been asked to mediate", the Secretary-General was quoted as saying, "nor have I offered to do so. Our involvement in helping make peace is always consensual."

On East Timor, Mr. Eckhard said that the next round of talks between Indonesia and Portugal on that subject would take place under the auspices of the Secretary-General at United Nations Headquarters on 4 and 5 August. The two countries would be represented at the level of Foreign Minister. Both sides were expected to explore some of the ideas for a settlement of the East Timor question, as well as confidence-building measures leading to such a settlement. Ambassador Jamsheed Marker, the Secretary-General's Personal Representative, had concluded his visit to Indonesia the day before yesterday. He had visited Portugal at the end of June.

The Spokesman then said that a special conference on Sierra Leone would take place at United Nations Headquarters on 30 July. It would be organized at the initiative of the United Nations in consultation with the Government of Sierra Leone and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The conference would address a number of issues, including support for Sierra Leone in its post-conflict peace-building efforts, humanitarian issues and refugees, as well as support for the Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG), the military arm of ECOWAS.

ECOWAS countries, Security Council members, donors and a number of United Nations agencies and programmes would participate in the one-day conference, Mr. Eckhard added. The Secretary-General would make an opening statement.

He then said that the Spokesman's Office had received a press release from the Panel of Eminent Persons which was continuing its visit to Algeria.

On Security Council matters, Mr. Eckhard said the Council was not meeting today. On Monday, it would be briefed by Carlos Westendorp, the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the latest situation concerning the implementation of the Dayton Accords. If time permitted, Mr. Westendorp would join the noon briefing.

The Spokesman said the Secretary-General would convene the third high- level meeting between the United Nations and regional organizations at Headquarters on 28 and 29 July. The heads of 16 regional organizations had been invited to attend. The focus of that meeting would be "conflict prevention". The participants would examine the challenge of conflict prevention, review how the United Nations and regional organizations were responding to it, and discuss areas of cooperation to meet it.

He added that the Department of Public Information (DPI) had prepared a background note on the meeting, which was available today, and which listed the organizations and senior United Nations officials invited. The meeting itself would be closed. United Nations Television would cover the Secretary- General's opening statement, the text of which would be issued as a press release.

Regarding Germany's signing of a memorandum of understanding on the standby arrangements, initially scheduled for yesterday, Mr. Eckhard said the ceremony had been postponed until today and would hopefully take place at 3:30 p.m. in the office of the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Bernard Miyet. If Germany signed today, it would become the seventeenth country to have signed a memorandum of understanding on the standby arrangements to hasten the deployment of peacekeeping troops.

On a different matter, the Spokesman said his Office had a statement from the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, saying she had

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 24 July 1998

been deeply disturbed to learn of the execution on 21 July of an Iranian citizen hanged apparently for the exercise of his Baha'i faith. The full text of that statement could be obtained in room S-378.

Also available in room S-378 was the summary of today's Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) briefing in Geneva, which had updates of the humanitarian situation in Kosovo, Angola and Guinea- Bissau, he said. The UNHCR had expressed its concern that the increased displacement inside Kosovo, of tens of thousands of people crammed into small areas, partially cut off from normal supplies and without electricity, could lead to a situation the refugee agency had faced in Bosnia, where aid workers were bringing relief to besieged pockets, having to brave checkpoints and clearances on a daily basis. The UNHCR said that the situation was likely to worsen in the winter when fresh local produce would no longer be available.

On ratifications, Mr. Eckhard said that Samoa had ratified yesterday the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Landmines and on Their Destruction. That made a total of 28 States parties. Forty were required for the treaty to enter into force.

He then drew attention to the presence on the racks today of an exchange of letters between the Secretary-General and the Security Council concerning the composition of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) in the Middle East. According to those letters, the Council approved of the Secretary-General's proposal to add Slovakia and Slovenia to the list of countries providing military observers.

The Spokesman welcomed the appointment of John Mills as the new Chief of Information for Benon Sevan, the Executive Director of the Iraq Programme. Mr. Mills had worked in the Bosnia peacekeeping mission and had succeeded Mr. Eckhard as spokesman for the Yugoslavia peace talks in Geneva. Most recently, he had been the information officer for Mary Robinson, the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Spokesman's Office and DPI both looked forward to working with an experienced information professional in the Iraq Programme to better keep the press informed. A handout on Mr. Mills was available in room S-378.

Referring to his announcement yesterday of a background briefing by a senior United Nations official on the time limits issue expected to be taken up by the General Assembly next Tuesday, Mr. Eckhard said Monday was busy with a briefing by Carlos Westendorp and another by Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), at 1 p.m. The Spokesman's Office would, therefore, try to bring the senior official on Tuesday when he could give his background briefing after the regular noon briefing.

Asked why Mr. Westendorp was coming to New York, the Spokesman said that the High Commissioner briefed the Security Council regularly on the

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implementation of the Dayton Accords. Would he meet the Secretary-General? the correspondent asked. Mr. Eckhard replied that although his Office did not have the Secretary-General's programme, he would be back in his office on Monday. Mr. Westendorp usually met the Secretary-General when he was in town.

There was some confusion regarding who was pulling out of Afghanistan and who was staying, another correspondent said. What was the position? Mr. Eckhard said that Mr. Vieira de Mello, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, had explained at his press briefing earlier this week that the United Nations had decided to stay in place despite the withdrawal of many non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Today's discussions between Mr. Vieira de Mello and the Taliban were part of an ongoing effort to get the Taliban to relax the conditions they had imposed and that had resulted in the NGOs' withdrawal.

He added that without NGO partners there was a limit to what the United Nations could do, but for the moment the decision was to remain in place. Did that not reflect disagreement between the Organization and its NGO partners? the same correspondent asked. Mr. Eckhard said his understanding was that while press reports before Mr. Vieira de Mello's briefing had indicated that the NGOs resented the United Nations decision to remain, there was now agreement among the NGOs that it was better for the Organization to stay.

Another correspondent asked whether the Secretary-General was getting "panicky" in view of the letter to the Security Council from Richard Butler, Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), which was the first real complaint by the Commission since the Secretary-General's February memorandum of understanding with Iraq. The Spokesman said that he was not sure it was the first complaint. Even if it was, the issue seemed to have been handled in a satisfactory manner as far as sealing the controversial document, and agreeing on a joint review of its contents by Mr. Butler and Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, when Ambassador Butler travelled to Iraq early next month. The Secretary-General was not nervous.

What was the Spokesman's comment on the new practice by the multinational Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina of arresting people at random and then releasing them? another correspondent asked. "They made a mistake, they got the wrong twins",Mr. Eckhard quipped.

He told another correspondent that there was nothing new yet on the investigation by the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) into the killing of four mission members.

Another correspondent asked if there was anything new in the investigation of the plane crash that killed the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Angola, Alioune Blondin Beye, and seven others. Was the investigation not supposed to end this week? The Spokesman replied that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations had been briefed at the end of last week on the status of the investigation.

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The intention of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations had been to release a preliminary conclusion, but they needed to do that in coordination with the Government of Côte d'Ivoire, which was taking the lead in the investigation, he said. It was understood that they had something in draft form, but had not yet coordinated with Côte d'Ivoire. Something would probably be released early next week.

Had anything been received from the High-level Panel on Algeria? another correspondent asked. Mr. Eckhard said press releases were being released almost daily from the spokesman travelling with the Panel. The third release had come in a few minutes before today's noon briefing.

Alex Taukatch, spokesman for General Assembly President Hennadiy Udovenko, said that the President was greatly concerned about recent developments in Afghanistan which seriously undermined international efforts to provide humanitarian aid to the Afghan people. Mr. Udovenko deplored the killing last weekend of two Afghan nationals working for the UNHCR and the WFP. He was also distressed by the expulsion of NGOs and called on the parties in Afghanistan to ensure the safety and security of humanitarian staff and to refrain from any action that could impede efforts to deliver assistance to the long-suffering people of Afghanistan. That statement, attributable to the Spokesman, was made available after the briefing.

This morning, the President had met with the Bureau of the Working Group on Security Council reform, Mr. Taukatch said. The Working Group was now finalizing its report to the General Assembly. It had met yesterday and was expected to meet again next week to work on that report.

He said that the question of the Group's work had also been one of the subjects of the President's meeting with the President of the Security Council, Ambassador Sergey Lavrov of the Russian Federation. That meeting was part of Mr. Udovenko's regular contacts with the Presidents of the main organs of the United Nations. They had exchanged views and informed each other about the activities of their respective bodies.

The Assembly President had noted with great satisfaction that the Council President was holding regular daily briefings for Members of the United Nations on the work of the Security Council, the spokesman continued. The subject of transparency was one of the concerns of Member States and had been repeatedly mentioned in the framework of the General Assembly. However, Mr. Udovenko had been a little nonplussed by the relatively insignificant number of delegations attending those briefings.

Mr. Taukatch said the President had also met this morning with the Permanent Reprersentative of Lebanon, Ambassador Samir Moubarak. Mr. Udovenko would be travelling to Lebanon in early August, at the official invitation of that country's Government, and the meeting had been devoted to discussion of the upcoming trip.

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On another matter, the spokesman drew attention to an informal briefing for delegations held this morning by the Special Adviser to the Secretary- General, John Ruggie, on a note that had just come out on time limits of new initiatives, or so-called "sunset" provisions, which was one of the proposals contained in the report of the Secretary-General on United Nations reform: measures and proposals. The document number was A/52/851/Add.1.

The note provided additional information in response to questions and comments by delegations in the open-ended informal consultations of the plenary on the agenda of United Nations reform, Mr. Taukatch went on to say. There had been many questions from delegates regarding time limits. The note and the briefing by Mr. Ruggie, which was held on the initiative of the Assembly President, were aimed at providing additional information in advance of upcoming open-ended informal consultations on that issue.

The note contained a hypothetical illustration of how time limits would work, the spokesman said. In that illustration, the General Assembly decided to establish a programme to detect near-earth asteroids. The note provided a five-year scenario on how that would be dealt with. It was an interesting example illustrating how the Secretary-General's proposal would work.

A correspondent asked whether the time limits of new initiatives would apply to past United Nations entities that had long served their purpose, or to new ones. Mr. Taukatch drew attention to paragraph 5 of the note, which said that the Secretary-General's proposal was intended to be prospective. Accordingly, the term "new", as in "new mandate", denoted a mandate established for the first time. Thus, the future modification of an existing mandate, no matter how extensive, would not make it "new".

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