DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

The following is a near verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by the Spokesman for the Secretary-General, Fred Eckhard:

I give up on my New Year's resolution. I will never start this briefing on time, and I'm not even going to try.

**Security Council:

Good afternoon. The Security Council is holding an open briefing on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. The briefers were the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Cornelio Sommaruga; the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy; and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu.

All 15 members of the Council are expected to speak. The session is being presided over by the Foreign Minister of Canada, Lloyd Axworthy.

Following the briefing, a presidential statement on the question of protection of civilians in armed conflict is expected to be adopted.

Yesterday afternoon, the Council adopted a resolution extending the mandate of MINURSO, which is the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. That is until the 31st of March to allow for consultations on the referendum protocols and planning activities.

While hoping there will be agreement on the protocols and the implementation calendar, the Council also supported the Secretary-General's intention to ask his Personal Envoy to reassess the viability of the mandate of MINURSO should the prospect for putting the measures into effect remain elusive at the time of submission of the Secretary-General's next report.

**Secretary-General:

The Secretary-General -- I think still now -- is meeting with the African Group, and that's on the subject of Angola. The Secretary-General's Special Representative on Angola, Issa Diallo, conveyed to him just a few minutes before that meeting started, the text of a letter from President dos Santos of Angola, which is a reply to the Secretary-General's letter to him asking him for his personal views on a continued UN presence in Angola.

I have no details on the President's letter at this time.

**Tajikistan:

The Secretary-General's interim report on Tajikistan is on the racks today. In it, the Secretary-General notes the slow progress in the peace process. He says that a great deal remains to be done. The risk inherent in the slow pace, he says, is the growing restlessness among the groups that are not direct parties to the peace agreement and to its power-sharing arrangements, as well as among the United Tajik Opposition fighters who are awaiting reintegration into the Tajik army or demobilization.

Saying it was necessary to speed up progress, the Secretary-General says his Special Representative and the members of the Contact Group are working with the parties to this end.

The Secretary-General also said he remains concerned by the precarious security situation in Tajikistan, and with the fact that the UTO (United Tajik Opposition) had not contributed more effectively to the investigation of the killing of four members of the UN Mission in July 1998. As a result, the Mission has continued to limit its activities to Dushanbe and to observe strict security precautions.

**Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Sudan:

The Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan, Leonardo Franco, will make his first visit to the country from the 13th to the 28th of February at the invitation of the Government.

The Special Rapporteur plans to travel to Khartoum, Wau and, possibly, Juba. He is scheduled to meet with numerous Government officials. He will also meet in Nairobi with UN officials from Operation Lifeline Sudan, representatives of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, and the Inter- Governmental Authority on Development.

We have more details in a note available in my Office.

**United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:

UNHCR reports today that a decade after the last Soviet soldier left Afghan soil, and 20 years after the first groups of Afghan refugees fled the Soviet invasion, more than 2.6 million Afghans still remain in exile.

The Afghans have remained the single largest refugee group in the world for 19 years in succession, although their continuing plight has, in recent years, been overshadowed by newer conflicts and refugee movements elsewhere in the world.

Please see the note on UNHCR's press briefing in Geneva today for more details on the Afghan refugee situations, as well as updates from Kosovo --

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 12 February 1999

where the atmosphere among the civilian population was described as being marked by fear and anxiety as the talks in Rambouillet, France, continue. UNHCR says that many citizens describe the talks as their last hope.

The UNHCR briefing note also contains an item on a new outflow of refugees from the Sudan into Chad. In addition, we have available for you the latest UNHCR update on the Great Lakes region in Africa.

**Sierra Leone:

The World Food Programme warns today that continued fighting in the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown threatens to place the entire population at risk of a large-scale food crisis in as little as three weeks.

WFP previously estimated that Freetown residents could face an extensive food crisis within two months, but it now says continued insecurity caused by sporadic fighting between the rebels and the Nigerian-led ECOMOG security forces (Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group) has exacerbated food shortages in the city and displaced more people from their homes, leaving them with no food, water or shelter.

**Guinea-Bissau:

We have a hand-out from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Guinea-Bissau saying that in response to evidence of a meningitis outbreak in the Bafata and Gabu regions in Guinea-Bissau, humanitarian agencies have flown vaccines in from Switzerland to start immediately immunization activities targeted at 45,000 people during the first stage.

**UN Expert on Extreme Poverty:

Some of you may recall that the Commission on Human Rights last year decided to appoint an independent expert on the situation of human rights and extreme poverty. Anne-Marie Lizin was appointed to the post and she met yesterday with the Secretary-General to present him with the findings of a report that she will formally submit to the Commission on Human Rights when it meets in March.

She has also just held a number of important meetings in Washington, D.C., including with Michel Camdessus, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

If you want to interview Ms. Lizin in English or in French, she'll be available later this afternoon. You can contact her at: 963-6152.

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**International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda:

Today at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Mali signed an agreement undertaking to provide prison facilities for those convicted by the Tribunal. This followed a meeting between the Tribunal's Registrar, Agwu Ukiwe Okali, and Mali's President, Alpha Oumar Konare. We have a press release in my Office for details.

**The Hague Forum:

The Hague Forum, appraising the implementation of the Programme of Action adopted at the 1994 Population and Development Conference concluded today. Delegates from 177 States approved a report on creating an enabling environment for population programmes, on gender equality and on the empowerment of women, on reproductive rights and health, on strengthening partnerships and on financing.

We have in my Office a press release with a summary of the main conclusions, as well as a press release on yesterday afternoon's meeting, and the closing address by the Executive Director of the Population Fund, Dr. Nafis Sadik.

**Payments to the United Nations:

We're $72,000 richer today, thanks to a payment by Viet Nam, which becomes the thirty-ninth Member State to pay its 1999 dues in full.

**The Week Ahead:

Now for our weekly feature -- looking at the week ahead, it's going to be a short week. Monday is a holiday here at UN Headquarters, and there'll be no briefing. We'll have a duty officer in the Spokesman's Office.

Giving you highlights but not all the material in this hand-out that is available to you in hard copy in my office:

On Tuesday, the Secretary-General's Special Representative, Issa Diallo, is expected to arrive here for consultations. The Foreign Minister of Cyprus is expected to be at UN Headquarters for a meeting with the Secretary-General on that day. Also on Tuesday, the Secretary-General will open the first session of the Preparatory Commission on the International Criminal Court. That will run through the 26th of February and the agenda for that meeting is out on the racks.

On Wednesday, the Security Council has scheduled consultations on Burundi, on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and on Sierra Leone.

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And on Thursday, Security Council consultations are scheduled on Angola, the preventive deployment force in The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and then on Tajikistan.

From the 18th to the 19th of February, there'll be a meeting in Rome on the Bethlehem 2000 International Conference on the Question of Palestine. On behalf of the Secretary-General, the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Kieran Prendergast, is expected to speak at that event on Thursday.

That's all I have for you. Any questions before we go to Jadranka?

**Question-and-Answer Session:

Question: Fred, could you comment on this report that the Secretary- General had a meeting with Prince Bandar on the question of the Libyan suspects and that he's assigned somebody to accompany him if the Libyan Government hands them over -- that somebody from the SG's office would accompany the suspects if they're handed over?

Spokesman: I think we've already told you that the Legal Counsel has done detailed planning for the transfer of these suspects to the Netherlands for trial should Libya decide to accept this proposed solution. I can't give you any details, but the assumption is that UN officials would accompany the suspects during this transfer.

There was no meeting with Prince Bandar in recent days. There was on the Secretary-General's programme of yesterday -- I think you saw -- a scheduled meeting with his Deputy, and that had to be cancelled because of the American Airlines job action that stranded him in London. And, there is a possibility that that meeting will be rescheduled for late today.

Follow-up Question: Is that meeting going to focus on Libya and this issue?

Spokesman: ...on the efforts of the Saudi and the South African Governments to bring this matter to closure.

Follow-up Question: Can you tell us a little more about this initiative by the Saudis and the South Africans?

Spokesman: No, except that the Secretary-General saw President Mandela and a senior Saudi Government official when he went to Abu Dhabi to address the Gulf Cooperation Council. He asked them to assist him in finalizing these negotiations -- well they weren't really negotiations -- in finalizing these understandings, clarifying questions that the Libyans had in response to the offer by the U.S. and the U.K. So, that's about all I can tell you at this time.

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Question: There's a report that the Foreign Office said today that Britain had asked the Secretary-General to provide UN monitors who could be in the prison in Scotland. Has the Secretary-General agreed to this proposal.

Spokesman: I can't give you -- I saw that same report. It seems to me quite plausible that we could have responded positively to such a request. But, I can't confirm for you now that we have; we'll try to get that information for you in the next hour or so.

The following is a summary of the briefing by Jadranka Mihalic, spokesman for the President of the General Assembly:

**General Committee:

Good Afternoon. This morning, the General Committee decided to recommend to the plenary the inclusion of an additional item to the agenda of the fifty-third session, entitled: Observer status for the Customs Cooperation Council in the General Assembly. This item was proposed by Chile and the request is contained in document A/53/236. Should the Assembly proceed to include this item, the agenda for the current session would come to a total of 169 items.

**The Plenary:

The plenary will reconvene on Wednesday, 17 February, in the afternoon to take up this issue and resume consideration of several other items. They include the election of members of the Committee for Programme and Coordination (to fill a remaining vacancy for African States); appointment of a member of the Joint Inspection Unit; confirmation of the appointment of the Secretary-General of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); announcement of the appointments of four additional members of the Committee on Relations with the Host Country, and others.

Following the adjournment of this meeting, the President will convene a meeting of the Open-Ended Informal Consultations of the Plenary on UN reform: measures and proposals, to continue consultations on the Millennium Assembly, as mandated by resolution 53/202 of 17 December 1998.

**Working Group on Financing for Development:

The Open-Ended Working Group on Financing for Development completed its session yesterday under the chairmanship of the Permanent Representatives of Austria and India and it agreed on the tentative schedule of consideration of eight main elements of the report of the Secretary-General, which serves as the basis for its deliberations. That is report A/53/470. It will reconvene from 14 to 18 March and then again in April.

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**Working Group on Equitable Security Council Representation:

The Open-Ended Working Group on the Question of Equitable Representation on the Security Council and Other Matters Related to the Security Council reached today the mid-point of its current session which will continue until the end of next week. In this week's deliberations, close to 50 delegations spoke in the general debate. This morning, the President introduced a programme of work for the next six months and proposed the methods of work for the deliberations.

Sessions are scheduled to take place every month until July, grouped around specific themes. This morning, the Working Group is having an exchange of views on the President's proposal and this meeting was still in progress when I left for the briefing.

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