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 the Security Council last night drafted a response to the two letters sent to the Council President last week by the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission for the disposal of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (UNSCOM), Richard Butler, and by the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed Elbaradei.

Those replies, which would be issued as official documents of the Security Council by tomorrow, were adopted under a "no objection" procedure and signed by the Council President shortly after 9 a.m. today, he said.

Mr. Eckhard said that the Security Council heard a briefing this morning on Sierra Leone by the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Hedi Annabi. The Secretary-General's first progress report on the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) was issued last week (document S/1998/750). Also available was a report from the Permanent Mission of Sierra Leone on the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programme (document S/1998/741).

In other action, the Security Council agreed to establish a list of candidates for judges on the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, Mr. Eckhard said. By that procedure, which would be finalized on 27 August, the Council would send the list of candidates to the General Assembly, which would elect three judges for the Third Chamber. The Council also held a formal meeting to extend the deadline to 14 September for the nomination of Judges to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

"It is weekly Iraq programme report time", the Spokesman said. According to the update released today, the oil overseers approved two more oil contracts last week -- with an Indonesian and an Italian company -- for 1.8 million barrels each. That brought to 52 the number of oil contracts approved in the current 180-day phase. The total revenue generated since the beginning of Phase IV, from 20 May to 25 November, was approximately $1.06 billion.

The Security Council Committee established under resolution 661 (1990) to monitor the implementation of sanctions against Iraq approved 65 humanitarian sales applications under Phase IV last week, Mr. Eckhard went on to say. The "661 Committee", as it was known, had put four applications on hold and had blocked none. Also approved were three humanitarian sales applications under Phase III. The relevant documents were available in the Spokesman's Office.

He said there was some sad news out of Tajikistan, where it had been learned that the personal bodyguard of the Secretary-General's Special

Representative in Tajikistan, Jan Kubis (Slovakia), was found dead Monday night with a gunshot wound in his head. Jori Anthony De Marco, age 37, was found in his apartment in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe. Mr. De Marco was a United States citizen who had been a New York-based security guard. He was a former Marine who had served with distinction in Beirut.

He went on to say that Mr. De Marco had been assigned since April to the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT). Mr. De Marco was found at approximately 9:30 p.m. local time, following a day at work. The Spokesman's Office had no further details on the circumstances of his death at present; an investigation would be conducted.

Mr. Eckhard drew attention to a press release from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as well as to a summary of the briefing by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva updating the plight of refugees fleeing the fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In another press release, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) expressed extreme concern on behalf of the international community at the deteriorating humanitarian situation in vast parts of the city of Kinshasa following the disruption of water and electricity yesterday. The population of Kinshasa was estimated to be between five and six million. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were distributing water purification tablets and providing medical assistance to various hospitals in an effort to reduce the risk of water-borne diseases.

Asked when the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Iraq, Prakash Shah, would return to New York, the Spokesman said he was expected on Thursday, 20 August. There was still no word from the Security Council regarding a request for a briefing by Mr. Shah, but the assumption was that the Council members would want to talk with him.

Was there any thought that the death of the personal bodyguard in Tajikistan was related to the recent shooting deaths there, or was it possible, as the newswire services had reported, that it was a suicide? a correspondent asked. Mr. Eckhard said it was too early to speculate, but initial indications were that the death was not linked to those other killings. Nothing definitive could be said as yet, pending the outcome of the investigation.

The Spokesman's Office was watching the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo "very closely", Mr. Eckhard said in response to a request for an update on events there. The situation was extremely complex,

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and no particular guidance was available in that regard on behalf of the Secretary-General.

To a question about when the Credentials Committee of the General Assembly might take a decision regarding the seats for Afghanistan and Cambodia in the upcoming Assembly session, Mr. Eckhard said that, according to the standard procedure, on the first day of its session, the Assembly appointed a Credentials Committee to begin its rather protracted process of reviewing the credentials of all delegations.

To a follow-up comment that such a procedure would not leave much time before the start of the general debate, Mr. Eckhard said it was his understanding that the status quo prevailed until the Committee made a determination one way or the other regarding the credentials of each delegation.

Asked about the Secretary-General's plans to take further action aimed at obtaining the required number of candidates for judges for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Spokesman said that Member States had submitted a number of nominees. With a minimum of 18 candidates required, there was a good chance that goal would be met by the 14 September deadline.

A correspondent said that when the four murders occurred in Tajikistan, it had been announced that the investigation would be concluded in approximately 10 days, yet some three weeks had passed. Asked whether there was any word on the status of that investigation, Mr. Eckhard said that while no report had been received from UNMOT containing the names of suspects in those deaths, the opposition military commanders had been instructed by their political leadership to arrest certain suspects. No further information was available at present.

Asked if the Secretary-General had any comment about the televised address made last night by United States President William Clinton, Mr. Eckhard said he did not. The Secretary-General was in Europe last night and was scheduled to rise very early this morning to travel to West Africa. The Spokesman's hunch was that he had been asleep.

Mr. Eckhard said he would check on an update concerning the investigation of the 26 June plane crash in Angola, which killed eight people, including the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Angola, Alioune Blondin Beye, and five staff of the United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA).

What was the Secretary-General's sense of where things were going in the Iraqi situation? a correspondent asked. Did he feel the Security Council should be doing more and that a confrontation might be looming? Mr. Eckhard

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said that, basically, the Secretary-General had been pleased that the Council's approach had been low-key rather than confrontational with military threats. On the other hand, he could not exclude that the Council would, once again, consider the military option. For the moment, however, the emphasis was on the diplomatic side.

The Secretary-General would be working closely with Council members to bring as much pressure on Iraq as possible to return to cooperation with the UNSCOM inspectors, Mr. Eckhard said. However, the Spokesman did not wish to speculate about what might happen if Iraq did not cooperate in the longer term.

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