DAILY BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, began today's noon briefing by referring correspondents to an Op-Ed piece by the Secretary- General in today's The New York Times. The piece was a preview of a speech the Secretary-General would give tonight at 8 p.m. at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. It was hoped that embargoed copies for correspondents would be available in the course of the afternoon.

The Security Council would be holding consultations in the afternoon beginning at 3:15 p.m, the Spokesman said. The first item on the agenda was Burundi. Council members would be briefed by Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahima Fall. Following Burundi, the Council would take up Kosovo. Council members would continue the discussions initiated yesterday on a possible presidential statement.

Speaking to the media yesterday after the adjournment of the consultations, Council President Celso L. M. Amorim (Brazil) had said that the members strongly condemned the massacre of Kosovar Albanians in the village of Racak in southern Kosovo, Mr. Eckhard continued. They also deplored the declaration by Belgrade of the Head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, William Walker, as a persona non-grata and reaffirmed their full support for Ambassador Walker and the efforts of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to bring about a peaceful resolution of the crisis. They also called on Belgrade to rescind this decision and to provide full support for Ambassador Walker, the OSCE and the Verification Mission. The Council members called for immediate and full investigations of the massacre in Racak.

Last night, the Secretary-General had welcomed the Council statement. On Saturday, he had issued a statement of his own calling for a "full investigation by the competent authorities". Today, upon arrival at the Secretariat building, he had encountered the press and expressed the "hope that all parties will cooperate with the OSCE". He had said that Ambassador Walker was a professional diplomat. He had also regretted that Judge Louise Arbour, the Prosecutor for the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, had not been able to get into Kosovo to conduct an investigation of her own. It was "best that an independent and a third party does it [the investigation]", the Secretary-General had said.

The last item on the Council's agenda today was Haiti, the Spokesman went on to say. The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Bernard Miyet, would brief the Council on the situation in that country.

Mr. Eckhard said Judge Arbour was still in Skopje, the capital of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. She was considering her options and was waiting to see the results of the meeting taking place in Belgrade today

between two senior commanders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and President Slobodan Milosevic.

In Geneva, Mr. Eckhard said, the Human Rights Spokesman had said this morning that the human rights observers present in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would do all they could to support Judge Arbour's investigation should she be able to enter Kosovo.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Sadako Ogata -- whose agency had set out this morning to try to reach about 1,000 people reported to be out in the woods, trapped by the fighting in villages south of Pristina -- again appealed for unhindered access to them, Mr. Eckhard continued. A convoy loaded with relief supplies, including food, blankets, plastic sheeting and mattresses, was standing by and would go to the area if the teams found the people in the woods south of the village of Malopolje. Those people had fled a Government offensive in Racak and other nearby villages over the weekend.

Members of the UNHCR staff who had spoken to some of the newly displaced had noted one group of 29 people who had reached the village of Dramnak after walking for five hours, Mr. Eckhard continued. The group had consisted mostly of women and children -- 11 between the ages of 2 months and 24 months old. They had said that while they were in the woods two infants had died of the cold, and that between 60 and 70 families had still been trapped there by the fighting. The group had said they had tried to go back to their villages several times during the weekend, but each time had had to turn back because of gunfire and mortar blasts.

The UNHCR estimated that about 5,300 people had fled Racak and nearby villages, the Spokesman said. The Racak killings had caused tension in other villages and UNHCR staff reported that in areas near the conflict zone women and children were moving out to stay with relatives in villages farther south.

On Angola, Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General would meet with the African Group of States this afternoon at 4 p.m. to discuss his report on the United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA). As correspondents knew, the report had been submitted to the Security Council on Sunday. The Security Council was scheduled to take up Angola tomorrow, Wednesday, 20 January, and the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Mr. Miyet, would introduce the Secretary-General's report.

Noting that the Angolan peace process had collapsed and that the country was now in a state of war, the Secretary-General indicated in his report that MONUA had no other option but to continue to reduce its presence in Angola and to proceed with the orderly repatriation of United Nations personnel and property. All United Nations team sites and regional headquarters would have been withdrawn to Luanda by mid-February. Most of the United Nations

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peacekeeping personnel would have been repatriated by 20 March. The Secretary-General suggested retention of an infantry company of up to 200 personnel to protect United Nations property during the first few months of the liquidation, which would begin upon the expiration of the Mission mandate on 26 February.

While MONUA could no longer play a useful role in the present circumstances, the Secretary-General stressed that the United Nations and the international community should not and must not turn its back on the Angolan people, Mr. Eckhard continued. He therefore indicated his intention to designate a senior official to serve as his Special Envoy for Angola, who would be based in New York. The Secretary-General also suggested the continuation of United Nations human rights and humanitarian activities in Angola. The humanitarian situation in Angola, already critical, had the potential to develop into a full-scale catastrophe, the Secretary-General stated. He therefore said that the United Nations was ready and willing to continue and, indeed, intensify humanitarian assistance, and urged both the Angolan Government and the leaders of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to provide guarantees of access and assurances of security of humanitarian personnel and operations.

The United Nation's Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, had just completed a four-day mission to Angola where he had discussed with members of the humanitarian community the future of humanitarian operations in that country, the Spokesman added.

On Sierra Leone, the Spokesman said a senior official of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) would be departing today to take part in a joint OCHA/United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) humanitarian mission in Sierra Leone. The objective of the week-long mission was to support the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Francis Okelo, as well as the Humanitarian coordinator in planning and executing a humanitarian response following the recent escalation in fighting. Freetown, where the needs were desperate, was on the mission's itinerary.

The Spokesman said that the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), meanwhile, had warned today that the food situation in Sierra Leone had become desperate and could degenerate into famine and starvation in the capital Freetown. The UNHCR staff in Kenema, 300 kilometers south-east of Freetown, had reported that there had been rebel activity in nearby villages over the weekend and that the displaced population there now stood at 37,000. The UNHCR and other aid agencies were to field a larger mission to the town this week.

There would be an embargoed briefing by a senior United Nations official on the subject of International Humanitarian Law and Armed Conflict tomorrow at 12:30 p.m., the Spokesman said. He asked correspondents to mark that on their calendar. He said a note to correspondents, to be distributed this

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afternoon, would say who would do the briefing, where it would be held and what the extent of the embargo was.

Azerbaijan and New Zealand had become the 18th and 19th Member States to make their full payments to the United Nations regular budget, Mr. Eckhard announced. Azerbaijan had made a payment of $228,600 and New Zealand, of $2,296,390. Member States who had not done so had until 31 January to make their payments to the regular budget before they went into arrears, the Spokesman noted.

Available in his Office was a press release from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on a new project to help six of the world's least developed countries (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique and Uganda) become more attractive to foreign investors. The press release was embargoed until tomorrow.

This afternoon at 2:30 p.m. two UNICEF directors would give a press conference in room S-226 about UNICEF emergencies, Mr. Eckhard said. The recently recorded World Chronicle TV programme no. 733, with Mark Moher, Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, was to be shown today on the in-house television channel 6 or 38.

A correspondent asked what the Secretary-General hoped to achieve in Angola and whether he was abandoning that country. Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General was responsible for the peacekeepers who were loaned by Member States to accomplish a political objective based on a peace agreement which neither side -- the Government of Angola and UNITA -- had any commitment to.

Both sides had shown a distinct preference for returning to war, Mr. Eckhard continued. He recalled the shooting down of two United Nations aircraft on 26 December 1998 and 2 January 1999, respectively. The security of the peacekeepers was something that the Secretary-General had to ask himself about, as well as the realistic possibility they had to achieve their mandate.

Asked why the Secretary-General's Special Representative in Angola, Issa Diallo, had, up to now, not met UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, Mr. Eckhard said, "That was another impediment to the political objective. If you can't speak to both sides, how can you do your job? So, on both the peacekeeping and the peacemaking side, we run out of options".

The correspondent asked why the Secretary-General's Special Representative could not, one way or another, find a way to meet Mr. Savimbi. Mr. Eckhard said that the Angolan Government, "to state an emphatic position", had indicated that it would not facilitate that meeting, and that it could not guarantee the security of the Special Representative, should he try to hold that meeting.

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Asked how much the Organization had spent on Angola, Mr. Eckhard said the amount was about $1.5 billion. He added that the intent was to try to sustain the humanitarian and human rights missions there to limit, to the extent possible, the suffering of the people generated by the resumption of war.

Responding to a question about an article in the New Republic attacking the Secretary-General, the Spokesman said, "In these profiles, you win some and lose some". He said the attacks were the opinions of the writer, and did not correspond to "the Secretary-General that we know".

A correspondent asked whether Under-Secretary-General Miyet could also provide an up-to-date briefing to the press on the situation in Haiti. Mr. Eckhard said he would ask whether that could be done. "I think there's some reluctance to get too public with our efforts in Haiti because of the sensitivity of the situation there, but we will be happy to relay your request", he added.

Replying to a question on the contents of the Secretary-General's speech tonight to the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary- General would explain in general and easily understandable terms, the role of the Secretary-General, its limits and opportunities. "The New York Times Op-Ed page article more or less laid that out, I think, in simple and clear language. It also gave him the chance to respond to some of the questions that have been raised, in particular, in the context of the situation in Iraq, and the role he had played there and to try to explain that his objective was really only the Security Council's objective, namely, the disarmament of Iraq. I assume he will have a number of questions".

Mr. Eckhard told a questioner that his Office had no control over the Council on Foreign Relation's policy of refusing broadcasts of question-answer segments of its proceedings. He would, however, be happy to relay the correspondent's request.

A correspondent asked why the Secretary-General did not appear at a press conference to answer all the attacks against him. Why did had he chosen the Council on Foreign Relations an hour before American President William Clinton's state of the Union address tonight before both Houses of Congress to speak? Why hadn't he come here to make a presentation? the correspondent added. Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General had a long-standing invitation from the Council on Foreign Relations to deliver an address there. It was only in the last few weeks that the shape of the message had been firmed up; in response to the events of the last few weeks, the Secretary-General could "not get out in front of the Security Council", Mr. Eckhard said. "The Security Council is dealing with Iraq, and asking where it goes from here".

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He said the Secretary-General did not want to give a press conference. He did have a certain number of things he wanted to clarify. That had been done by the Spokesman in this briefing, and by one of his aides, John G. Ruggie, in an Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post on Monday. Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General hoped, personally, to be able to clear the air at the Council on Foreign Relations tonight.

A correspondent requested comment on the meeting the Secretary-General was having (at the time of the briefing) with the Foreign Minister of Argentina who was at Headquarters "to talk on the Malvinas/Falklands issue". Mr. Eckhard said that meeting was about to wind up at the time of the briefing and he would see whether a statement could be issued afterwards. He asked the correspondent to stay in touch with his Office, and also said an announcement would be made for the benefit of all correspondents.

Noting that the Secretary-General had once been involved in the search for a solution to the Falklands/Malvinas question, a correspondent asked what the position of the Organization was on the issue. Mr. Eckhard referred the correspondent to the statement he expected to be issued shortly on the talks between the Secretary-General and the Foreign Minister of Argentina. He did not want to "venture an opinion beyond a carefully-worded statement we expect to issue in the next half hour".

"What is the financial situation of the United Nations"? a correspondent asked. "We haven't heard anything lately", the correspondent added. Mr. Eckhard said the beginning of the year tended to be reasonably fluid from a cash-flow point of view. Exact figures would be obtained. If a number of large contributors and a larger number of smaller ones came through in the first 30 days, he said "that usually gets us through the first quarter. As others came through a little bit late, they helped get the Organization through the summer. He said the direst period had been August-September just before the United States payment was appropriated in Washington. That came nine months late, and was equal to the last three months operating expenses, he said.

On the Secretary-General's meeting on Angola with members of the African Group this afternoon, a correspondent asked whether the Secretary-General expected a proposal from the Group or whether he would discuss his own. Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General was aware that some members of the African Group were very concerned about the Secretary-General's recommendation to withdraw MONUA. A number of them had hoped that somehow the peacekeeping Mission could be sustained. The Secretary-General "would, I think, walk them through the reasoning that he laid out in his report. Why he felt he had no choice but to shut down the Mission, and hope to get their understanding and support".

Returning to the question of Iraq, a correspondent wanted to know whether the Secretary-General had pursued any of those "spying stories". Had

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he investigated the allegations? Had he reached a conclusion? Could the United Nations actually come out and say 'yes, we do now realize that there was spying carried out through the use of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). Was the United Nations willing to say that it understood that and accepted it? The correspondent further stated that the United Nations had not said anything or commented on those reports.

Mr. Eckhard said the Organization had no basis to make that determination. He further told the correspondent: "The Secretary-General could ask Richard Butler [the Executive Chairman of UNSCOM], which he did".

"But that was in the beginning", the correspondent observed. Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General had no choice but to accept the word of Mr. Butler and of United States representatives. "We have no independent investigative capability when it comes to matters of intelligence".

In response to a correspondent's comment that former UNSCOM employee Scott Ritter had admitted to spying, Mr. Eckhard said Mr. Ritter had said a lot of things. "From our point of view, under the terms of his contract, he should not have revealed many things that he did. And so I don't want to comment on anything that he said", he added.

A correspondent asked whether there was no oversight capacity for looking into such "spying" activities, or whether the issue was not important enough for an investigation. "Look into what"? Mr. Eckhard said. "You're talking about looking into the activities of the intelligence services of Member States".

"Was there an effort, from the United Nations point of view, to get to the bottom of the whole issue"? the correspondent persisted. "Was there no further action"?

Mr. Eckhard said: "The Secretary-General looked into it, to the extent that he could. It's now in the hands of the Council, should the Council wish to pursue it". "Did the Secretary-General know the identity of the staff member who talked to The Washington Post?" a correspondent asked. "No", Mr. Eckhard replied. "Does he care to know?" the correspondent further asked. Mr. Eckhard said: "I think he probably would have liked to have known who it was. It was clearly a blunder that embarrassed him and the Secretariat. I think any one who might have been the source of that quote has been chastened by the experience we have all been through. And the hope is that we've all learned something from it".

"Do you think that he [the Secretary-General] was targeted? Suddenly, an efficient Secretary-General is being demonized with all these criticisms", a correspondent asked. "I don't think he's being demonized", Mr. Eckhard replied. "Naturally, for every negative profile, I think there had been a greater number of positive profiles. When you're acting as he is, at a

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certain level of prominence in world affairs, you expect to take your knocks. The honeymoon many of us expected to be over in three to six months has pretty much continued for close to two years. I don't think it is anything unusual that we should now start going through highs and lows, in terms of approval ratings".

He said the approval ratings for the Secretary-General and for the United Nations, in the United States at least, "seems to be quite high". "So, I don't see any intent on the part of anyone to demonize him, or to attack him for political reasons, apart from the normal political football that you find in these high visibility issues, like Iraq", Mr. Eckhard added.

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