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. I'd like to welcome Joseph Connor to the briefing. As you know he's the Under-Secretary-General for Management. He reported to the Fifth Committee this week on the financial situation of the Organization and he's here to brief you as well.

**Security Council Consultations

The Security Council is holding consultations today on the Ethiopia- Eritrea conflict. Kieran Prendergast, Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs, briefed Council members. The Secretary-General attended that session and took a few questions himself.

There has been a change in the Council's programme for today. Discussions on Angola, originally planned for this morning, have been postponed.

**Withdrawal of Indictment against Ntuyahaga

Last Tuesday, the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda requested the Tribunal to withdraw the indictment against Bernard Ntuyahaga in favour of a trial in Belgium. The Prosecution argued that this case fell under the category of cases most appropriate for the exercise of concurrent jurisdiction by Belgium which has instituted criminal investigations against the accused since 1994 in connection with the death of 10 Belgian peacekeepers in Rwanda.

The Prosecutor also requested the trial chamber to order the release of the accused from the Tribunal's custody to the Tanzanian authorities. This morning, in Arusha, the Tribunal's trial chamber accepted the request by the Prosecutor to withdraw the indictment, but ordered that Ntuyahaga be released and declined to grant the Prosecutor's additional request to have the accused handed over to the Tanzanian authorities to be extradited to Belgium. The Tribunal's position was that it did not have jurisdiction in order to release a person who was no longer under indictment into the custody of any given State.

Louise Arbour, the chief Prosector, told us that she has not yet studied the text of the Tribunal's decision. She wants to study the reasoning in support of the Tribunal's conclusion that the concurrent jurisdiction by Belgium was irrelevant. She remains fully of the view that Belgium has jurisdiction and will continue to support the efforts that will lead to extradition of the accused to Belgium.

A press release from the Rwanda Tribunal is available in my office. If you need more details on the legal aspects of the Tribunal's decision, you can call the Tribunal's acting spokesman, Kingsley Moghalu at (212) 963-2850, ext. 5042. If you want more details on the Prosecutor's strategy in this case, you can contact her office in the Hague through the ICTY Press Office at 31-71-416-5343.

**UN Mission to Jakarta and East Timor

A team of six United Nations Secretariat staff, led by Francesc Vendrell, Director of the Asia and Pacific Division in the Department of Political Affairs, is leaving today for Jakarta and East Timor. The mission, announced by the Secretary-General just last week, will carry out a preliminary needs assessment for the consultation of the East Timorese, through direct ballot, of the autonomy proposal. As you recall, the consultation mechanism was agreed to by the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia and Portugal during their meeting with the Secretary-General last Wednesday and Thursday (10 and 11 March).

After their visit to Jakarta and East Timor, the team will go on to Australia, New Zealand and Portugal. They will be back in New York at the end of the first week of April to prepare a report in advance of the next senior officials talks to be held here at Headquarters on 14 and 15 April.

**Secretary-General and 20 Per Cent

You might have seen in William Safire's column in The New York Times this morning a quotation of Senator Jesse Helms saying that the Secretary- General had told the Senator that "he agreed to a 20 per cent United States share" of the United Nations regular budget. The United States is now assessed 25 per cent. The Secretary-General has had a number of constructive conversations with Senator Helms over the last two years or so, but there seems to have been a misunderstanding on this point.

First, in all his conversations with Senator Helms and others in Washington, the Secretary-General has emphasized that the United States must negotiate with other Member States any change in the assessments. Second, he has also consistently said that, in his view, Member States might accept a reduction in the United States share from 25 to 22 per cent, but that 20 per cent would be very difficult to achieve.

**New Commissioner for Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Secretary-General has decided to appoint Colonel Detlef Buwitt of Germany as the next Commissioner of the United Nations International Police Task Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Government of Germany has informed the Secretary-General that Colonel Buwitt will be promoted to Brigadier- General upon his appointment to the post. The Security Council has taken note

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of the Secretary-General's decision. Colonel Buwitt previously served with the United Nations civilian police mission as its Chief of Staff from 1996 to 1997 and is currently working as Director of the Police Department of the Kosovo Verification Mission. He succeeds Richard Monk of the United Kingdom, who returned to his country earlier this month.

**Sanctions on Iraq Committee Meets

The 661 Committee, which oversees the sanctions on Iraq, met this morning at 9 a.m. to discuss the Iraqi flights carrying pilgrims to Mecca. The Committee Chairman, Ambassador Peter van Walsum of the Netherlands, will give an oral briefing on this matter to the Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations and to the President of the Security Council. Mr. Hans Corell, United Nations Legal Counsel, was at the Committee meeting at the request of the Committee Chairman. According to the Committee, there was no consensus on this matter among members.

**UNSCOM Chairman rebuts Iraqi allegation

The Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), Richard Butler, sent a letter to the President of the Security Council on 11 March, rebutting the Iraqi allegation that the spread of hoof and mouth disease among Iraqi livestock resulted from a shortage of vaccine, whose production was halted at a facility where UNSCOM destroyed its equipment. Ambassador Butler says that Iraq admitted in July 1995 that the facility at Daura was not a purely civilian facility, but had been used for biological warfare, agent production, research and development.

Iraq unilaterally halted the vaccine production in 1992 and not all the equipment was destroyed by UNSCOM in 1996. Ambassador Butler adds that UNSCOM imposes no impediment on the import of hoof and mouth disease vaccine, as it is a matter of notification. This letter is available on the racks.

**Compensation Commission awards more than $170 million to Corporations

The Governing Council of the United Nations Compensation Commission on Iraq, which concluded its 31st session in Geneva today, approved $173 million to be paid for the 259 claims filed by corporations for compensation for losses incurred during the Gulf crisis. It also approved $14 million for the 24 claims filed by 14 Governments. We have a press release in our office.

**Ted Turner Foundation Appeals to United States to Pay Debt to UN

Any of you who picked up The Washington Times today saw an ad placed by the Better World Fund of the UN Foundation [that is Ted Turner's foundation] featuring a letter signed by seven former United States Secretaries of State calling on Congress to pay the United States debt to the United Nations.

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They write, "As former Secretaries of State, we know first hand the importance of the United Nations and its agencies in securing global peace, stability and prosperity." They warn that the United States cannot lead if it ignores its basic international responsibilities. They also point to the important reforms which have been carried out so far, and say that the payment of United States arrears is critical to continuing the reform process.

Also out of Washington, we have a press release from the United Nations Information Centre there on United Nations reform, which outlines the progress achieved so far. It also contains information on the budget -- I'm sure that Mr. Connor will have more information on that.

**Secretary-General's Guinea-Bissau Report Available

The Secretary-General's report on Guinea-Bissau is on the racks. In it he says he strongly hopes that the parties will translate into concrete measures the commitments they undertook under the Abuja agreement.

**Commission on Status of Women Closes Annual Session

As you know, the Commission on the Status of Women wraps up its annual session tomorrow. Among its accomplishments this year was the adoption of an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Secretary-General views this Optional Protocol as a major step forward in realizing governments' commitments to women. He urges Member States to show the same commitment to speedy ratification of the Protocol as they showed to the Convention itself. We have a longer version of this statement in my office.

**New Committee Saves the United Nations $$$$

Out on the racks today is the agenda for the first session of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for Development. This new Committee is the result of a merger of the Committee on Natural Resources and the Committee on New and Renewable Sources of Energy and on Energy for Development. The merger was proposed by the Secretary-General in his reform package. The Economic and Social Council's decision to merge the two bodies saved the United Nations over $152,000.

**UNICEF Expresses Hope for Children and Women in Sierra Leone

From the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), we have a press release saying that despite Sierra Leone's recent history of brutality against children and women and extreme difficulties in delivering humanitarian assistance to some regions, UNICEF expressed hope today that a window of opportunity may finally be opening. The agency cited recent increases in the number of children released by rebels and voiced the hope that many more would soon be freed. UNICEF also expressed a need for safe corridors which would

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facilitate getting humanitarian aid to children in desperate need. A full copy of that release is available in my office.

**Press Briefings

At tomorrow's briefing, the guest will be Mary Robinson, the High Commissioner for Human Rights. And the Chairman of the Preparatory Committee preparing for the General Assembly special session in follow-up to the Beijing conference will brief the media at 11:15 a.m. in Room 226 on the planning and the difficulties encountered in the process.

**Question and Answer Session

Question: On reports that the United Nations is temporarily suspending deployment of American and British international staffers to Afghanistan, isn't that against the United Nations Charter that says Member States are not allowed to dictate what the United Nations does with their nationals? Is the Secretary-General concerned about this?

Spokesman: It is not a matter of dictating. We did our assessment and we decided that the situation warranted the return of our staff to Afghanistan. Subsequently, the United Kingdom and United States Governments came to us to say they had reason to believe that their nationals could be at risk. We said we would study that, certainly we do not want to take any unnecessary risks, and so as a provisional measure, we said we would not be sending United Kingdom and United States nationals back to Afghanistan until we could assess the information provided to us by those Governments. It's not a constitutional issue, it's a security issue.

Question: Did they say Bin Laden might have been the reason why their nationals are at risk?

Spokesman: I have no details on what the information was that the United Kingdom and the United States provided to us.

Question: Do the United Nations or Secretary-General have anything to say on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, since their threat of use of force represents a form of aggression also?

Spokesman: I have nothing at this time. We'll see how that situation develops -- it's not over yet.

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