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, began today's noon briefing by saying that the Secretary-General had returned to the office today after a holiday break. He would have dinner tonight with members of the Security Council. That was the second month in a row that the monthly Council luncheon had been moved to the dinner hour out of respect for those who observed the Moslem holy month of Ramadan.

The Council was having informal consultations on Sierra Leone and Angola today, he said. Council members had before them the special report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) and would hear a briefing on the situation there by Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Hédi Annabi. Mr. Annabi would also brief members on the situation in Angola, and perhaps on the situation in the Central African Republic.

Mr. Eckhard said that according to the United Nations Security Coordinator and Special Emissary of the Secretary-General, Benon Sevan, a United Nations search team had visited the site of the first United Nations plane crash in Angola last Friday. The site was approximately three kilometres from the village of Vila Nova. Based on the preliminary observations of the team -- which had been at the site for less than two hours owing to the lateness of the day and security concerns -- Mr. Sevan had indicated at a press conference in Luanda on Saturday that the United Nations aircraft had gone totally out of control and had nosedived to the ground at a very high speed. Given the impact of the fall, much of the plane was buried in the ground, with only a portion of the tail section visible.

Mr. Sevan said it was doubtful that anyone could have survived such an impact, the Spokesman went on. He also talked about the tampering of the cockpit voice recorder, and attempts by someone to cover the aircraft with a lot of branches. An engineering team would be sent to the site tomorrow to excavate the aircraft, and efforts were under way to locate the crash site of the second United Nations aircraft. The summary of the press conference by Mr. Sevan was available in the Spokesman's Office. Also on Angola, there would be a troop contributors meeting today at 3:15 p.m.

Following a troop contributors meeting on UNOMSIL, the Council had heard an update on the situation in Sierra Leone this morning. The rebels appeared to have retained their hold on the centre of Freetown; however, positions in the west of the city held by the Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG) had been reinforced. As of this morning, fighting was reported in the city centre, indicating advances by ECOMOG over the weekend. The Observer Mission's compound had been partially burned and

looted, and the staff had been relocated to Conakry, where they had established an operations room to monitor events inside Sierra Leone as best they could.

The Spokesman said it had just been learned that the last remaining international UNOMSIL staff member, who had stayed behind in Freetown, had joined the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Sierra Leone, Francis Okelo. Mr. Okelo had returned briefly to Freetown by helicopter this morning. Accompanied by the Foreign Ministers of the Ivory Coast and Togo, he had been in Lungi earlier today to meet with rebel leader Foday Sankoh. He hoped to arrange a ceasefire and persuade the rebels to refrain from further killings, looting and property damage. Council members had also been informed of the shooting incident yesterday involving three journalists riding in an ECOMOG convoy near the city centre. Two journalists had been shot, one of them fatally. The three had been flown to Lungi and then to Conakry, where the two survivors were receiving medical attention.

A two-day high-level meeting on Burundi had begun this morning at Headquarters, Mr. Eckhard said. The former President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, was among the senior regional and United Nations officials and donors in attendance. The meeting was organized by the United Nations Department of Political Affairs, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Canadian Government. Among the items expected to be discussed were the resources required for the so-called Arusha peace process, aimed at ending the civil war in Burundi, as well as the resources needed for peace-building activities there. The Spokesman's Office had arranged a background briefing for correspondents by a senior United Nations official on that meeting at 2:30 p.m. in room S-226. The Secretary-General would meet with Mr. Nyerere at 3:30 p.m.

The Spokesman said that on Saturday, at approximately 4 p.m., the International Police Task Force (IPTF) stationed in Foca, Bosnia and Herzegovina, had been attacked by a mob, following the earlier fatal shooting there by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led multinational stabilization force (SFOR) of suspected war criminal, Dragan Gagovic. Shots were fired, windows smashed and the station ransacked, injuring five Task Force personnel. Two of them had required medical treatment; the other three had received slight injuries. The Task Force was currently assessing the damage and intended to return to Foca as soon as possible to resume its duties. Copies of a press statement by the spokesman for the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) were available in Mr. Eckhard's Office.

Mr. Eckhard drew attention to the opening in Geneva this morning by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bertie Ramcharan, of a working group session on child rights. The working group was expected to discuss, among other items, the minimum age of the participation of children in armed forces. Many countries wanted the minimum military age to be fixed at 18, but others held different views. Over the next two weeks, the working group would

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 11 January 1999

draft an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and report to the Commission on Human Rights. The proposal under discussion in Geneva was available upon request in the Spokesman's Office.

In a further announcement, Mr. Eckhard said that Argentina had become the seventy-second country to sign the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. No ratifications of the treaty had been deposited thus far.

A correspondent asked if the Spokesman was aware of other incidents in Foca preventing the IPTF from performing its duties. The Spokesman said that he was not.

So, everything is going smoothly? the correspondent asked. Mr. Eckhard replied that it was, as far as he knew. He assumed that the crowd was angry at SFOR, but that "we were the convenient targets".

Following up on the report that the voice recorder from the first Angola plane crash had been found and tampered with, a correspondent asked whether it had been retrieved for further analysis. Mr. Eckhard said he did not have any further details from Mr. Sevan on that matter, besides what he had already reported at the briefing. He referred the correspondent to the text of the statement by the Security Coordinator, adding that he hoped to have additional details from Mr. Sevan by tomorrow. What he knew now was probably all that would be available for today.

Another correspondent asked how it was known that the voice recorder had been tampered with. Mr. Eckhard said he did not know those details, but obviously Mr. Sevan must have felt comfortable enough to make that information public and must be certain about it, although Mr. Sevan, himself, had not been on the mission. Mr. Eckhard added that he did not know whether the voice recorder had been removed or not.

Asked for further news about the issuance of the Secretary-General's report to the Council on Angola, Mr. Eckhard said the draft had gone to the 38th floor this morning and would probably be out in another couple of days. It had been due on Friday, but would likely be distributed a few days early.

* *** *