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 Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General:

Good afternoon. Before I start I just would like to say that last summer, Stella Dorfman of my office retired and we spent about eight or nine months of recruitment which came to fruition today with Anne Siddall replacing Stella in my office.

She comes to us from the personnel area. She's got two field missions in her background: Namibia in 1989-1990, where I met her for the first time, and then she was the special assistant to [former Humanitarian Coordinator] Dennis Halliday in Iraq for six months.

She'll be our office manager and eventually our expert for you on all administrative issues, including finance and budget. Hers is the first smiling face you'll see on the right-hand side as you walk into the Office and I hope you'll greet her today. I'm really thrilled to have her and I think you'll find her a strong addition to the office.

**East Timor

Now for the briefing. The latest round of talks on East Timor started this morning with a slight change in the programme that we had announced yesterday. The Personal Representative of the Secretary-General, Jamsheed Marker, at the request of the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, met with the Minister at his hotel this morning. Following that, at 11 o'clock, Ambassador Marker met with Ambassador Fernando Neves of Portugal. That meeting took place here in the Secretariat Building. Ambassador Marker will have a working luncheon with the Foreign Minister of Portugal, Jaime Gama, and then there are no changes in the schedule from this afternoon.

At 3:30 p.m., the Secretary-General will meet with Ambassador Marker. At 3:45 p.m., he will meet with the Indonesian delegation headed by Minister Alatas, at 4:15 p.m., with the Portuguese delegation headed by Minister Gama, and then at 4:45 p.m., the Secretary-General will meet with the two delegations together.

There will be photo opportunities for all of the afternoon meetings.

Coming into the Building this morning, the Secretary-General was asked about the East Timor talks. He said the developments in the last few weeks have been encouraging. The text of those comments is available in my office.

**Security Council

The Security Council today is holding consultations on the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Council members were briefed by the Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Ibrahima Fall.

The Council is also expected to discuss a draft resolution on the extension of the mandate of the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL). The resolution is expected to be adopted tomorrow at a formal session of the Council.

Also tomorrow, the Chairman of the three panels on Iraq, Ambassador Celso Amorim, is expected to brief the Council on the work of the panels. That, of course, will be in closed consultations.

**Ethiopia-Eritrea

Also on Ethiopia-Eritrea, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has approved a $24.3 million emergency operation to feed up to 272,000 Ethiopians who are internally displaced by the border conflict.

According to the WFP, the fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea over the disputed territory of Badme displaced some 337,300 Ethiopians. The Government is trying to integrate the displaced with the local population, avoiding camps. In response to the Government's request for emergency food assistance, the WFP emergency operation will assist people displaced by the conflict and ease the burden on host communities and host families who themselves experience food insecurity. The operation is to last for nine months, from March through November of this year.

We have more information in a press release which is expected to be issued tomorrow in Nairobi.

**Ashkabad Talks on Afghanistan

We told you last week that the Ashkabad talks on Afghanistan were to start today. Representatives from the Taliban have arrived in Ashkabad today, but poor weather in the Panjshir Valley inside Afghanistan has delayed the departure of the delegation from the opposition alliance, known as the United Front. A plane from the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA) was sent to pick up the participants today, and if they arrive as scheduled late today, the talks should then begin tomorrow.

**Tajikistan: New Chief Military Observer

The Secretary-General has appointed Brigadier-General John Hvidegaard of Denmark as the next Chief Military Observer of the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT). The current Chief Military Observer,

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 10 March 1999

Brigadier-General Tengku Ariffin Bin Tengku Mohammed of Malaysia, will relinquish his post on 4 April. He has been serving in that post since last April, and an exchange of letters between the Secretary-General and the Security Council are on the racks this morning.

**North Korea Nutritional Survey

We had mentioned to you some of the results of the WFP-UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) nutritional survey in North Korea late last year. We now have available for you complete copies of that first-ever nationwide nutritional survey in North Korea -- a situation described now as famine in slow motion.

**UNHCR Update on Great Lakes and West Africa

We also have available from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) an update on the Great Lakes region of Africa, as well as on West Africa, which reports on the recent visit by the High Commissioner, Sadako Ogata, to West Africa, the continued flow of refugees from Sierra Leone to Guinea and the deployment of additional UNHCR staff to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to set up camps for refugees from Angola and Brazzaville.

**WHO Sends Drugs to Afghanistan

The World Health Organization (WHO) Afghanistan, which has its office in Islamabad, has hired a helicopter and sent 400 kilograms of medical supplies to the areas affected by an influenza-like disease that has claimed close to 200 lives in a remote mountainous area of northern Afghanistan.

The helicopter went from Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to Faizabad in Afghanistan on Tuesday [and] dropped off the supplies there, from whence they would be carried into the affected areas.

**Statement on Kurds' Rights

This morning in Geneva, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination adopted a statement on the human rights of the Kurdish people. In it, the Committee expressed "its concern about acts and policies of suppression of the fundamental rights and the identity of the Kurds as distinct people".

If you're interested in that you can get the full text in my office.

**Contributions

On contributions, which is my last item for this afternoon, I will have in my office the status of outstanding contributions to the United Nations as

Daily Press Briefing - 4 - 10 March 1999

of the end of February. At that date, over $2.9 billion was owed to the United Nations. Of that, $1.7 billion was for peacekeeping and $1.1 billion, roughly, for the regular budget. There was also $150 million owed for the International Tribunals.

**Question-and-Answer Session

Question: Has WHO actually figured out what that mystery disease was in northern Afghanistan?

Answer: They figured out what it wasn't. They said it wasn't plague, it wasn't typhoid; they listed a number of things that they had suspected. All they're saying now is that it is an influenza-type disease and that many of the deaths might have been caused by secondary infections resulting from the initial disease. I don't think they have anything more specific on it.

Question: Can you specify a bit more what was discussed this morning in the talks between Portugal and Indonesia this morning?

Answer: No I can't. On Ambassador Marker's meeting with the Indonesian Foreign Minister, he's not yet briefed the Secretary-General so he didn't want to tell us anything that went on at that meeting, which I think was a breakfast meeting.

On the other meetings of this morning, we have no read-outs so we've asked Ambassador Marker when he might speak to you and he said he doesn't think he'll be able to brief you today. He is considering some sort of briefing or press conference tomorrow when the talks are over. So unless you can tackle him in the hallways, I don't think you'll be getting anything officially from him today.

Question: You said that they talked in the hotel; was it the hotel in which the Indonesian delegation is staying or the hotel in which Mr. Marker is staying?

Answer: I don't know specifically; my impression was that he went to the hotel where the Indonesian Foreign Minister is staying. We'll have to double-check that for you.

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