DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Juan Carlos Brandt, Senior Associate Spokesman for the Secretary- General, began today's noon briefing by reading the following statement:

The Secretary-General was outraged and appalled to hear of today's bomb explosions in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, which have resulted in a heavy toll of dead and wounded. He condemns utterly this heartless and indiscriminate terrorism against innocent civilians, and extends his deep condolences to the families and Governments concerned. The Secretary-General was concerned to learn that several United Nations staff members were injured in the two explosions. He hopes that they will make a rapid and full recovery from their injuries. The Secretary-General reiterates his adamant condemnation of terrorist acts, whatever their objective.

Mr. Brandt told correspondents that earlier today, the Secretary- General's initial reaction to the incidents had also been released. When asked by Portuguese journalists in Guimaraes, Portugal, to comment on the attacks, the Secretary-General said that he was quite shocked because it was the kind of terrorist attack that "you do not see in that part of the world". He said he did not have enough information at the time to know who was behind them and what the objective was, but it was really a very worrying situation.

Regarding United Nations staff, Mr. Brandt said that in Nairobi, one person in the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) office located near the area where the explosion took place, was injured. The Spokesman's Office did not have a name or nationality for that person at the moment.

Continuing, Mr. Brandt said that all United Nations offices in the city centre of Nairobi had been closed. Staff had been sent home and advised to avoid the downtown area. In Dar-es-Salaam, several staff members of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), located near the United States Embassy, had received minor injuries. The doors of those two offices were apparently blown off and glass shattered all over the place.

Conveying another statement attributable to the Secretary-General, Mr. Brandt told correspondents that the Secretary-General was pleased that elections to the National Assembly in Cambodia had been held on schedule on 26 July. He congratulated the Cambodian people on the overwhelming turnout of voters and noted with satisfaction that the polling process was primarily peaceful and orderly. The Secretary-General hoped that all political parties would resolve outstanding problems through dialogue and due process. The

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objective should be the formation of a government that fully reflected the wish of the Cambodian people for reconciliation, pluralism and development.

Mr. Brandt said that there was no Security Council meeting scheduled for today and none was expected to take place on Monday either. The Spokesman's Office understood that the next meeting would be held on Tuesday, 11 August, when the Council was expected to take up Angola and the situation in Kosovo.

Mr. Brandt noted that while Iraq dominated the scene in the United Nations yesterday, little notice, unfortunately, was paid to Council action on Afghanistan which took place in the afternoon. He reminded correspondents that the Council issued a formal presidential statement in which it expressed grave concern at the new sharp escalation of the military confrontation in that country and demanded an urgent and unconditional ceasefire. It called on all Afghan parties to return to the negotiating table. It also called on all States to refrain from any outside interference in that country and to end the supply of arms to all the parties to the conflict. The statement, which addressed humanitarian and human rights questions as well, had been available at the documents counter on the third floor since yesterday afternoon.

Mr. Brandt informed correspondents that the Secretary-General's report on Angola was available today. In that report he strongly urged the Government and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to exercise utmost restraint in the present dramatic situation. He expressed his deep disappointment at UNITA's failure to fully demobilize its forces, and to cooperate in the extension of State administration throughout the country. He called upon the Angolan National Police to refrain from practices inconsistent with its status as defined by the Lusaka Protocol.

According to the report, the Secretary-General also called on both sides to renew their efforts towards national reconciliation, to stop the exchange of threats and war rhetoric and to initiate confidence-building measures immediately, continued Mr. Brandt. The Secretary-General reaffirmed the willingness of the United Nations to continue to help the Angolan people, provided there was an unequivocal commitment from both parties to resolve the crisis peacefully in keeping with the Lusaka Protocol. He recommended that the United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA) be extended for one month until 15 September.

Mr. Brandt said that the positive news from Angola was that the Joint Commission met today, with the participation of Isaias Samakuva, the head of the UNITA delegation, who returned to Luanda yesterday from Andulo after an absence of two months. That move followed talks between UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Preventive and Peacemaking Efforts, Lakhdar Brahimi. Mr. Brahimi also met with the President of Angola, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, on Monday, and secured a commitment to stop the state media from disseminating hostile propaganda. Since then there had been a reduction in the use of that damaging material by the Angolan media.

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Also on Angola, Mr. Brandt said that the Spokesman's Office had a press release from the World Food Programme (WFP), which was providing emergency food aid to some 60,000 displaced Angolans. There could be thousands more in need who the WFP could not reach because of growing insecurity. The Programme also reported in the release, that in addition to the escalating conflict, Angola was suffering the effects of drought in the south and a meningitis epidemic among the displaced, many of whom had been forced to flee for the second or third time in recent years.

Mr. Brandt told correspondents that the report of the Secretary-General on the situation relating to Kosovo should be out as a Security Council document in the course of the afternoon. That was the fourth 30-day report on the matter. The report reviewed the status of monitoring the arms embargo, the situation in Kosovo, the work of the United Nations humanitarian agencies, and contained in its annexes the latest report from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and a communication from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Still on Kosovo, Mr. Brandt said that according to the Briefing Notes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), its Spokesman, Kris Janowski, said this morning in Geneva that continued fighting in western Kosovo had forced between 30,000 to 50,000 ethnic Albanians to flee their homes, bringing the overall number of people uprooted in Kosovo to more than 200,000. A UNHCR convoy of five trucks, which delivered relief supplies for people in the hills around Malisevo on Thursday, reported that houses were still burning in the town. People who fled to the hills said that many villages in western Drenica had been emptied because of heavy shelling and that houses had been set on fire.

Continuing with Kosovo, Mr. Brandt said that according to a press release from the World Food Programme (WFP), this weekend it would attempt to make its first deliveries to more than 50,000 ethnic Albanians who were trapped in forests near the border between Kosovo Province and Albania. The WFP estimated that those people, who had been trapped for almost two months, were badly in need of food and other relief supplies. The press release was available in the Spokesman's Office with more details.

Regarding the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Brandt said that in the UNHCR Briefing Notes that he had mentioned earlier, the organization reported that because of the continued insecurity in the east of that country, it had not been able to judge the effect of the fighting on the civilian population. Approximately 400 former Burundian refugees and Congolese had, however, crossed into Burundi so far.

Still on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Brandt told correspondents that there was a statement issued today by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, which was available in the Spokesman's Office. In that statement, she said that there had been reports

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of looting and burning in shops targeting certain segments of the population in Kinshasa. There were also indications that ethnically motivated violence was taking place in other parts of the country as the armed conflict spread. She said the Government must extend equal protection to all persons under its jurisdiction, regardless of their origin. She joined the Secretary-General in appealing to all sides to refrain from acts of persecution, harassment or discrimination against any segment of the population.

Mr. Brandt said that the Security Coordinators Office said that the group of 34 United Nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) internationals who had been stranded in Uvira, eastern Congo, were able to leave the country today. They were now in Burundi and were all reported to be safe. However, the situation in Bukavu and Goma, that he had mentioned yesterday continued -- a number of staff members were still stranded there.

The Secretary-General arrived in Portugal 24 hours later than scheduled due to his decision to stay in New York to participate in Security Council deliberations on Iraq, Mr. Brandt said. By flying directly to Oporto, in the north of the country, however, he was able to keep his original schedule and to participate in the closing ceremony of the United Nations Youth Forum, that was taking place in nearby Braga. The Secretary-General in his speech to hundreds of assembled youth from all over the world, which was available in the Spokesman's Office, said that "in this changing world of new challenges, we need, more than ever before, dedicated and talented individuals to enter public service". "The choice would not be easy", he advised them, but "joining a winning team is an easy option". "It is precisely when an institution, a cause is struggling to find its way", he said, "that it needs the support of the best and most courageous people." The Secretary-General had spoken about that issue, several times in the past, Mr. Brandt added.

The Secretary-General was greeted in Braga by the President of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio, who also addressed the Forum, Mr. Brandt continued. Youth representatives from Ghana and Sweden then presented the Secretary-General with the Braga Plan of Action that they had developed. The Plan would also be given to a ministerial level meeting on youth, which the Secretary-General would open in Lisbon tomorrow.

Mr. Brandt said that on arrival in Oporto, the Secretary-General spoke briefly to the press. For those interested correspondents, a copy of the transcript which pertained to Guinea Bissau and Angola was available in the Spokesman's Office. After a luncheon in his honour hosted by President Sampaio, the Secretary-General and the Portuguese Head of State met with the press. The Spokesman's Office did not have the transcript as yet but would provide it later. The Secretary-General was due to return to Oporto this evening where the Mayor of that city, Fernando Gomes, would host a dinner in his honour. He would then return to Lisbon later in the evening.

Finally, "and in the good news department", Mr. Brandt said that the United Nations was donating thousands of broken and obsolete computers to a

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unique programme that restored them for low-income individuals in communities around New York and elsewhere in the United States. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was working with a group called the Learning and Information Technology for Community via Telecomputing (LINCT) Coalition which trained volunteers to refurbish donated computers. Once the computers had been restored, they were used to train low-income people who needed computer skills. After completing their courses, those people got to keep the computers that they were trained on. The programme was being carried out by the Ministerial Interfaith Association.

It was not only people who benefited, continued Mr. Brandt. The project also protected the environment by keeping all of those broken computers out of landfills. Given the importance of bringing developing countries up to speed in the computer age, UNDP was planning to expand the programme to Africa, Central America and Asia. Meanwhile, the Secretariat had released 1,600 more computers for the project. A press release was available in the Spokesman's Office with all the details.

Regarding the bombings in Kenya and the United Republic of Tanzania, a correspondent asked whether there had been any recent threats in either Dar- es-Salaam or Nairobi against United Nations personnel. Mr. Brandt said he could not give an answer to that at the moment as he was not aware of anything like that.

When questioned about the exact number of injuries among United Nations personnel in the bombings, Mr. Brandt said one individual in the UNIDO in Nairobi had been injured. In Dar-es-Salaam, several staff members in the UNFPA and the ILO had also received minor injuries due to doors being blown off and flying shattered glass.

Asked if the injury to the staff member in Nairobi was serious, Mr. Brandt said that he had no details at the moment.

A correspondent wanted to know how many countries had ratified the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. Mr. Brandt replied that 30 had ratified it.

A correspondent said that there were reports from Tajikistan that those responsible for the murders of the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) workers had been released to United Nations officials and wanted to know if there was any information on the identities and motives of those individuals. Mr. Brandt said he only had sketchy minor information that he was not going to use at the present time and that was why he had not brought the issue up at the briefing. He hoped that early this afternoon he would have more on the issue.

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