DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
19990603
The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by the Spokesman for the Secretary-General, Fred Eckhard.
Good afternoon.
**Kosovo
Coming out of his midday meeting with Pope John Paul II, the Secretary- General cautiously welcomed the news out of Belgrade that the Serbian Parliament had voted to accept the NATO peace proposal for Kosovo. The Secretary-General will be back in New York this afternoon and hopes to be briefed by President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, the European Union Envoy for Kosovo.
Meanwhile, United Nations contingency planning for the implementation of the plan is accelerating. Bernard Miyet, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, returned last night from Europe, where he conferred with officials from NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), as well as with Carl Bildt, one of the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the Balkans. He reports a convergence of views with the OSCE on the civilian component of the proposed international presence.
It's, of course, still not clear who would do what, and we're waiting for those details to be firmed up.
Kosovo again -- the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) welcomed the reported acceptance of a peace plan for Kosovo, but said that the return of more than 800,000 refugees would depend on realities on the ground. The UNHCR believes that the complete pullout of Serbian forces, coupled with a strong international contingent, are the necessary conditions for refugee return. UNHCR staff are ready to deploy as soon as possible to assess conditions of those on the ground and conditions for return.
A UNHCR planning team for return was being dispatched to the region to link up with other humanitarian and aid agencies preparing for the movement of hundreds of thousands of refugees after the Kosovo conflict ends -- a daunting task for the international community requiring massive resources.
We have available today's UNHCR Update on the refugee situation, as well as a transcript of remarks by Asma Jahangir, Human Rights Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, on her recent trip to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
She said she received testimonies of human rights violations, including systematic extrajudicial killings that were mostly carried out by forces under direct or indirect State control, including identified members of units of the Serbian police, the Yugoslav Army or paramilitary forces. Asked to characterize the action by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Kosovo, she answered: "the action was a horrifying, barbarous elimination of a nationality".
**Security Council
Today, Security Council members heard a briefing from the Secretariat on UNSCOM. They then discussed the report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations mission in the Central African Republic. You'll recall that in his report issued last week, the Secretary-General had outlined the necessary logistical, personnel and other preparations the United Nations mission should make to support the upcoming elections there. The Secretary-General also urged the Government to expedite its own preparations for the elections.
Members of the Council will then be briefed by Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Sergio Vieira de Mello, on humanitarian emergencies outside the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The members of the Security Council have accepted the Secretary-General's invitation to go on a retreat to discuss ways to invigorate their role as the principal United Nations organ dealing with international peace and security.
Council members are scheduled to leave New York Friday afternoon for a conference facility in the Princeton, New Jersey area. The retreat will conclude Saturday evening.
**Colombia: Call for Release of Hostages
In a statement issued today in Bogota, Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, made a humanitarian appeal to all parties to the conflict in Colombia and called for the release of more than 80 hostages in Colombia -- churchgoers, airline passengers and a noted woman senator.
He said: "I am particularly distressed to learn that children are among those being held in Cali. I would like to greet all of these children as free persons."
We have the text of his statement available in my Office.
**Oversight Office on Disarmament Programme
The Office of Internal Oversight Services has just released its in-depth evaluation of the disarmament programme. You'll find that document on the racks today.
Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 3 June 1999
The report found that the Department of Disarmament Affairs is generally satisfactory in its support of multilateral bodies. Its shortcomings can partly be explained by insufficient resources; extrabudgetary funding, in particular, has decreased sharply since 1992.
The Oversight Office is recommending that the programme receive regular budget funding comparable to the pre-1992 level. It is also recommending that the Department of Disarmament Affairs carry out more fund-raising to supplement regular budget resources.
In his cover note to the report, the Secretary-General concurs with these recommendations.
**WFP/Great Lakes Region
The World Food Programme (WFP) appealed today for immediate contributions from donor nations to keep the food aid "pipeline" from breaking down in the troubled central African region of the Great Lakes.
The WFP says it is virtually the sole source of food for more than 1 million people in four countries -- but existing stocks will be exhausted by the end of July, and fresh supplies are not scheduled to arrive until September.
Please see the WFP news release for more details.
**Drought in Jordan
Jordan has just been hit by its worst drought in decades, according to a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the WFP.
The agencies say that cereal and other food crops have been decimated and sheep farmers are facing financial ruin. Over 1 million people face compromised food security, according to the report.
We have a press release in my Office with more details, including a Web site address where you can read the full report.
**UNEP/World Conference on Global Commons
A press release is also available from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concerning the opening today in Tokyo of the World Conference on Global Commons. The Conference, jointly organized by the Japanese non- governmental organization Global Environment Action, the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs and UNEP, is part of this year's World Environment Day celebrations, being hosted by the Government of Japan.
In his opening remarks, UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said: "The life-support systems on which our economies depend are being overloaded
Daily Press Briefing - 4 - 3 June 1999
and, unless we move towards sustainable development, we could face severe and irreversible environmental damage."
**Member States' Payments
We received four payments in full for 1999 of regular budget dues: Bahrain, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Samoa and Papua New Guinea.
That brings to 71 the number of Member States paid in full for this year.
What have I been given here?
**East Timor
We have our daily report on East Timor by the Spokesman. I'll just read the first sentence here:
"The Special Representative of the Secretary-General in East Timor, Ian Martin, hosted a flag-raising ceremony this morning inaugurating the United Nations mission's headquarters in Dili, East Timor."
Pick up David's daily report for more information.
I think that's all I have. Any questions from you?
Question-and-Answer Session
Question : Do you have any comment on the report yesterday that a high- ranking police officer in Haiti that your people trained killed 11 people and after that disappeared somewhere around the Dominican Republic?
Spokesman: No, I didn't see anything on that. I'll have to look into our cable traffic to see what we might have on that incident.
Question: Your people in Haiti made a statement. Do you have any coordination with your field office?
Spokesman: We get cables every day from all our overseas missions. We review them and we decide what to report here and this --
Question: -- eleven people get killed and you don't know anything about it?
Spokesman: I can say nothing more than I've already told you. I'll look into the cable traffic to see if I can confirm the incident that you described.
[The Spokesman later announced that a statement was available, in French, issued by the mission in Haiti yesterday on the shooting incident.]
Daily Press Briefing - 5 - 3 June 1999
Question: About the retreat in Princeton: how many people from each member of the Security Council are invited? Is it a very small gathering? Is it totally off-limits to the press?
Spokesman: It is off-limits to the press. It is the permanent representatives, but I understand that any who want to bring spouses may do so.
Question: It is a very small gathering.
Spokesman: Yes.
Question: Do you have anything on what the Secretary-General or the Secretariat is going to do about the UNSCOM report and getting the chemicals out of the Baghdad office? It appears that the Council may not really want to take any action and may defer that to the Secretariat.
Spokesman: I'm not aware of any disagreement among those concerned, either UNSCOM or the Council or the Secretariat. This is essentially a technical issue, and I think everyone agrees it needs to be addressed promptly and professionally, and it's going to be taken care of.
Question: Would UNSCOM dispatch a team or the Secretariat put together a team that would go in and take it out, on its own without the Council doing anything?
Spokesman: I don't think I'm in a position to say exactly how it will be done, but professionals will be sent to the site to remove and, if necessary, destroy the toxic substances there. When it's decided or agreed exactly how it will be done, we will announce it.
Question: Have you had any communication from Baghdad if they are in agreement that this is the way it should proceed?
Spokesman: I'm not aware, but I do know that the Secretariat is in regular touch with Prakash Shah [the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Iraq], so we've had contact with the Baghdad Government concerning this, but I can't say more than that.
Question: Back to Kosovo, is the Secretary-General's plan to come back tomorrow still in place?
Spokesman: He's in the air now, and he'll be back by late afternoon. As I said, he hopes to get briefed by Martti Ahtisaari on the specifics of what has been agreed. In the meantime, on our front here, we are accelerating our contingency planning even before we know exactly what it is that the United Nations might be called on to do.
Daily Press Briefing - 6 - 3 June 1999
Question: In addition to meeting with the Pope, did the Secretary- General also meet with Italian government officials while he was in Rome?
Spokesman: He met, as I mentioned yesterday, with President Ciampi at noon. To my knowledge, that was the only other meeting he had in Rome.
Question: You said that contingency planning was accelerating. How long would it take actually? [inaudible]
Spokesman: I don't think we can say until we know who is going to be asked to do what. I think everyone feels the need to move quickly. The Secretary-General has repeatedly said that if we have to winterize the housing for these refugees, let's do it in Kosovo after they have returned, rather than in the camps in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The hope is that people could be moved back before the winter into winterized quarters. That's going to be quite a logistical feat.
Question: How soon would preparation have to be done about winterizing?
Spokesman: We were saying June, this month, funds would have to be raised and work be begun on procurement, in order to have the tents winterized for the winter that comes on rather quickly around October.
Thank you very much.
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