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:

Good afternoon.

**Kosovo

As staff from her agency and partner groups struggle to bring relief from the suffering to the unrelenting stream of ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo, Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, today appealed for more help from governments and urged States to keep their borders open. Mrs. Ogata vowed that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would help the refugees cope with the burden of the more than 650,000 refugees from the Serbian province.

"We will do our utmost", she said. "But we need additional support, and we need it now." Mrs. Ogata also warned that, while providing support to humanitarian agencies, political leaders must develop their efforts to reach a political solution. "Otherwise", she said, "the Kosovo crisis will affect the Balkans for years to come."

Mrs. Ogata also urged the world to focus on the immediate cause of the crisis. "The bottom line is that ethnic cleansing must stop", she said. "And it must stop immediately. If it does not end, this crisis will continue for a long time and more people will suffer, no matter how efficient we are in bringing relief to refugees."

Meanwhile, Mrs. Ogata's staff at the border reported with concern the slowdown of refugee flows from Kosovo. No significant new arrivals were reported by midday into Albania. Some 3,000 refugees crossed the border into an area in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), difficult to reach by even four-wheel vehicles because of the poor roads. The new arrivals said 7,000 more were on the way. At one of three major crossing from Kosovo to FYROM, the UNHCR reported 3,000 people were stuck in a no-man's land. Meanwhile, a train arrived at the Blace crossing. Only those with passports, numbering about 150, were allowed off. UNHCR staff at Blace reported that the train went back into Kosovo with some 250 to 350 people in it.

The UNHCR also reported with concern the escalating tensions along the Montenegro/Kosovo border. More than 70,000 people have fled from Kosovo into Montenegro. The United Nations spokesman in Montenegro announced today that the United Nations policing mission in Bosnia, the International Police Task Force (IPTF), had stepped up monitoring of border crossings with Montenegro and the main roads to Sarajevo, after receiving disturbing allegations that

refugees were being harassed and robbed, possibly even by Republika Srpska officers, while making their way into Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Elizabeth Rehn, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is briefing the Security Council today. She is expected to provide an overall report of the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the work of the United Nations mission there, UNMIBH. She may also raise the issue of the impact of NATO airstrikes and the inflow of tens of thousands of refugees to Bosnia. We had planned to have her here at the meeting, but she is still with the Council. It's unlikely she'll make it. We'll arrange for her to speak at the stand-up microphone.

The UNHCR reported more people were also crossing into Bosnia, where more than 30,000 had arrived. In her news release, Mrs. Ogata welcomed FYROM's decision on Monday to allow the construction of a new refugee camp and a new transit centre. Mrs. Ogata also asked FYROM to approve the construction of more camps and the expansion of the existing ones to accommodate newly arriving refugees. The UNHCR also expressed deep sorrow over the deaths of three aid workers from the United States-based non-governmental organization (NGO), Refugees International, in Albania over the weekend.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it has delivered more than 2,000 metric tonnes of food to Albania since 28 March. The WFP will provide the Montenegran Government with approximately 3,000 metric tonnes to help them with their own food supply problems for the general population. The WFP is also appealing for an additional 6 million humanitarian daily rations to feed the next surge of refugees from Kosovo.

Out on the racks today as document S/1999/433 is a proposal on Kosovo suggested by the President of Ukraine.

**ICTY

Louise Arbour, the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is in London today, meeting with the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, and with Defence Minister George Robinson. The United Kingdom announced today it would hand over evidence of alleged Serb atrocities in Kosovo. Germany, yesterday, also provided information to Mrs. Arbour.

**Security Council

The Security Council is having consultations today on the United Nations Mission of Observers in Prevlaka in southern Croatia. The report of the Secretary-General on that came out last week. In it, the Secretary-General says he is encouraged by bilateral discussions between Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but not so substantial progress has been achieved. We have 27 military observers in Prevlaka, from 24 countries.

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 20 April 1999

**East Timor

The next round of talks on East Timor are due to start tomorrow here at United Nations Headquarters. They'll continue through Friday. Tomorrow's meetings are at the senior-official level. They'll be chaired by Ambassador Jamsheed Marker, the Personal Representative of the Secretary-General. As usual, Ambassador Marker will first hold bilateral talks. At 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, he'll meet with the Portuguese delegation led by Ambassador Fernando Neves. The bilateral meeting with the Indonesian delegation led by Ambassador Nugroho Wisnumurti will begin at 2:30 p.m. All of them will then meet together at 3:30 p.m. Tomorrow, we will confirm the agenda for the ministerial level talks which will take place on Thursday and Friday.

**Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme

The weekly update from the Iraq programme is available. Executive Director Benon Sevan estimates that Iraqi oil sales for the current phase could reach around $3.4 billion. This is a significant and welcome increase on the estimate of $2.9 billion made in February. However, Mr. Sevan cautions against relying too much on the current upswing in the price of oil, and notes that even with the $3.4 billion, there is still a humanitarian deficit of more than $2.5 billion for the Oil-for-Food Programme over the last two phases. That would cover six months each. So the situation has gone from terrible to bad.

**Ethiopia-Eritrea

On Ethiopia-Eritrea, Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Africa, is at Headquarters holding consultations in preparation for his visit to Ethiopia and Eritrea. As part of his mission, Ambassador Sahnoun will also consult with the Chairman of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), President Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, and the OAU Secretary-General, Salim Salim. Ambassador Sahnoun is expected to leave for the region soon. We'll give you the details of his travel plans as soon as available.

**Afghanistan

On Afghanistan, the United Nations weekly flight from Islamabad to Faizabad, north of Kabul in Afghanistan, was cancelled today because of fighting in the area. An assessment mission to consider the return of United Nations international staff to the region has been postponed. Currently, United Nations staff are in Kabul and Kandahar as part of a limited and phased return to Afghanistan.

**World Food Programme

The WFP confirmed today the first-ever bilateral arrangement between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The amount

Daily Press Briefing - 4 - 20 April 1999

is for 100,000 metric tonnes of food aid and an additional 100,000 tonnes of potato seeds from the United States to the DPRK through United States NGOs. The first 2,000 metric tonnes of food aid will be taken from WFP stocks. The WFP will be issuing an appeal for the DPRK later this week. We expect Catherine Bertini, the Executive Director of WFP, to be here on Friday as a guest at the briefing.

**Sustainable Development

The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development opened its two- week session here yesterday. It began a three-day dialogue on how to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of the tourist industry. There's a big delegation from the business side, hotel chains, airlines and travel agents, and also from local government, the mayors of Heidelberg and Honolulu, for example. We have a media advisory on the racks, giving a schedule and a delegation list. The dialogue wraps up tomorrow at noon, and there will be two press conferences.

**Press Conferences Tomorrow

A press conference at 2 p.m. tomorrow concerns tourism and local government, and another at 2:30 p.m. is on NGOs and trade unions in the context of "sustainable tourism", as it's called. A third press conference for tomorrow will launch the International Commission on Sustainable Consumption. That's at 11:15 a.m.

**Question-and-Answer Session

Question: Did the Secretary-General have any reaction to yesterday's Financial Times article about the UNDP Administrator [James Gustave] Speth?

Spokesman: We saw that article. It said Mr. Speth was leaving midway through his first term, having accomplished not much. That was the thrust of it. In fact, Mr. Speth is leaving in the middle of his second term. There's a fundamental difference there. He gave the Secretary-General more than two years notice, that he would leave in the middle of his second term because he felt by time he would have accomplished much of what he set out to do and that he intended to go to Yale University and become Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Science. Of course, the Financial Times writer is free to assess Mr. Speth any way he sees. But he ought to get his facts straight as to the amount of time the Administrator has served.

* *** *