DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY 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.

**Kosovo

Good afternoon. Today we will have the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the Balkans, Carl Bildt, here to talk to you about Kosovo, where restoring law and order is a top priority.

The United Nations has stepped up its appeal for the quick release and deployment of international police officers. We need policing capacity now before lawlessness prevails -- after which it will be very hard to introduce order. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the acting Special Representative of the Secretary-General charged with setting up the United Nations operation in Kosovo, urged the four visiting Foreign Ministers in Pristina yesterday to urgently put police contingents at the disposal of the United Nations.

In Pristina today, De Mello made an urgent appeal to visiting Javier Solana, the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, for NATO countries to make available civilian police and civilian administrators for swift deployment in Kosovo. Bernard Miyet, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, will be making a similar appeal in a meeting with police contributors at United Nations Headquarters this afternoon at 4:30 p.m.

We need about 3,000 international police officers. A number of countries have expressed their willingness, but those offers have not yet been confirmed.

We have just learned that a group of Albanian and Serb leaders, who had separate meetings with Solana and Clark, had their first public encounter at UNMIK headquarters, during which the Serb Archbishop Artemije and KLA leader Thaci shook hands and exchanged a few words.

The United Nations mission in Kosovo, meanwhile, was at the site of the killings earlier today of one Serb professor and two other Serb staff members at the University of Pristina close to UNMIK headquarters.

In other developments in Kosovo, shortly after midnight, after a report of documents being retrieved from the main Yugoslav Government meeting building, Martin Griffiths, the Deputy to the acting Special Representative, led an inspection team with KFOR. The building was cordoned off by KFOR troops. The importance of this documentation to us is to be able to first carry out the administrative functions we would eventually be assuming, but also because so many refugees had their identity documents destroyed on leaving Kosovo. If we could get telephone records, tax records, we would be

able to not only confirm people's identity, but link them to the homes that they own.

Also in Pristina today, Dennis McNamara, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Special Envoy for the former Yugoslavia and Albania, said organized returns to Urosevac, Prizren and Pristina could begin as early as next week from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania. This will be the beginning of organized returns. The precondition for this has been an understanding reached with KFOR, the international security force in Kosovo, that the security conditions for the commencement of organized return exist in these three destinations.

The UNHCR staff in camps in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are identifying refugees who wish to take advantage of the offer of transport assistance from the UNHCR and its partners. Refugees will be told that they must be from the specific town selected for return because the necessary conditions for organized return are currently in place only in those areas.

Less than two weeks after its return to Kosovo as lead humanitarian agency, UNHCR has established offices in five of seven designated towns across Kosovo, including the three chosen for the initial organized returns.

On the reconstruction front, the European Union informed the United Nations yesterday of its intention to create an agency for the reconstruction of Kosovo. The European Commission estimates the cost of reconstruction in Kosovo to be in the order of 500 to 700 million euro a year for three years. One euro is $1.03.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today pledged to give every primary school-aged child in Kosovo the opportunity to be back in school by the start of the academic year this September, despite the huge challenges posed in the wake of widespread carnage and destruction in the province's infrastructure. UNICEF, which had been helping to provide education for tens of thousands of Kosovar refugee children in Albania and in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, said the education system within Kosovo had been devastated with many schools vandalized or destroyed and an undetermined number of teachers injured or killed.

The United Nations also began its first radio broadcast in Kosovo today as part of its mass information campaign to appeal for tolerance and restraint on all sides and call upon the cooperation of the entire population to work with the United Nations mission in the province.

In addition to the Kosovo updates we provide to you in our daily noon briefings which are available on the Web site, we now have a chronology of the United Nations mission since its inception on 10 June available on the Spokesman's page. This chronology will be updated daily with the information from the noon briefing.

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 24 June 1999

**Secretary-General in Moscow and London

In his final day in the Russian Federation, the Secretary-General met with President Boris Yeltsin for about 45 minutes this morning, and then had an additional hour with the President over lunch. They had a broad review of the international agenda, including Kosovo.

The Secretary-General then flew to London from Moscow for an unofficial visit there. He is scheduled to make two major speeches there on Friday and Monday.

At 6 p.m. local time, he is expected to meet with United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair. This evening he is to have dinner with Clare Short, the United Kingdom Secretary for International Development.

**East Timor

Ambassador Jamsheed Marker arrived in Dili this morning for a two-day visit to East Timor. He will have political meetings today. Tomorrow he will be visiting United Nations electoral offices and talking with United Nations personnel.

Early next week, leaders from pro-independence and pro-integration factions will gather in Jakarta for a meeting organized by East Timorese church leaders. Xanana Gusmao is expected to attend that meeting, as well as leaders drawn from the diaspora. The United Nations will participate as an observer.

**Security Council Consultations

The Security Council heard a briefing this morning on Somalia by the Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Ibrahima Fall. He discussed the political and security situation in Somalia, as well as humanitarian concerns facing that country.

Council members then took up Cyprus. Joachim Hutter, Director of the Asia and Middle East Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, introduced the reports of the Secretary-General on his good offices in Cyprus and on the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP).

Under other matters, the Council is expected to discuss a draft presidential statement on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It will also take up Georgia and the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

**United Kingdom and France Sign Memorandum of Understanding

Tomorrow at 3:15 p.m., the United Kingdom and France will become the twenty-third and twenty-fourth countries to officially expressed their willingness to participate in the United Nations Standby Arrangements by

Daily Press Briefing - 4 - 24 June 1999

signing a memorandum of understanding. The United Kingdom and France will be the first permanent members of the Security Council to join the standby arrangements system.

The Standby Arrangement is based upon the commitments of Member States to contribute specified resources with agreed response times in order to make United Nations peacekeeping more quickly deployable.

The signing will take place in room S-3727A, the Peacekeeping Department conference room, and members of the press are welcome to attend. Ambassadors Sir Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom, and Alain Dejammet of France, will be happy to take questions.

**Secretary-General Appoints UNAMET Chief Military Liaison Officer

The Secretary-General has appointed Brigadier Rezaqul Haider of Bangladesh as Chief Military Liaison Officer of the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET). Brigadier Haider will assume the post shortly.

Brigadier Haider has served in the Bangladesh Armed Forces since 1971. He is currently the Commandant, Infantry Regimental Centre, Chittagong. He has extensive experience in command and staff appointments in the Bangladesh army and received professional training both in Bangladesh and abroad.

**High Commissioner for Human Rights in Sierra Leone

Mary Robinson, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, arrived in Freetown today, beginning a two-day trip to Sierra Leone, where she is scheduled to meet with President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and other senior officials. The High Commissioner will also meet with members of human rights organizations operating in the country.

The High Commissioner is travelling with a high-level delegation which includes the former President of Botswana, Ketumile Masire, and a number of human rights experts.

We will keep you updated on her visit.

**Grants for Organizations Supporting Victims of Torture

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, yesterday approved over $5 million worth of grants to organizations supporting victims of torture. The money, which comes from the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture, will benefit some 130 organizations providing medical, psychiatric, psychological, social, economic, legal, humanitarian and other forms of assistance to victims of torture and their families all over the world. Last year, this Fund assisted an estimated 60,000 torture victims and their family members.

Daily Press Briefing - 5 - 24 June 1999

You can pick up a press release in my office with more details.

And, by the way, tomorrow at 11 a.m. here in room S-226, there will be a press briefing on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which is marked every year on 26 June. Speakers will include Elsa Stamatopoulou of the High Commissioner's New York Office as well as representatives of Amnesty International, the Center for Victims of Torture and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims.

**New Drug Control Initiative

The United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) today announced that it is setting up a new database that will dramatically increase the overall knowledge of drug trafficking trends and routes worldwide. The UNDCP is setting up the database with the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) and the World Customs Organization.

This initiative will make it possible for these three agencies to jointly assess global trends in drug trafficking, analyse the latest information and share the results with governments working on drug-control strategies.

You can pick up a press release in my office with more details.

**DRC Charges Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda

Yesterday afternoon, we squawked a press release from the International Court of Justice on a case brought by the Democratic Republic of the Congo against Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda.

Kinshasa is charging those countries with "acts of armed aggression committed ... in flagrant breach of the United Nations Charter and of the Charter of the Organization of African Unity. It contends that their troops invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo in violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity". Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda are also accused of attempting to assassinate President Kabila, with the object of installing a Tutsi regime or a regime under Tutsi control.

You can read more in the press release, which is available in my office.

**Question-and-Answer Session

Question: Was the vote in the United States Senate yesterday a solution to the problem of the payment of that country's dues to the United Nations?

Spokesman: It's the first step -- only a partial payment. We don't know whether it will amount to a third or half of what is owed and the conditionality is troubling, and, we don't know whether the conditions would

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get in the way of the payment of this third or half that's being proposed. It hasn't gone to the House yet.

It was in the House that the abortion rider was added to similar legislation two years ago that killed it. So, we have to see what the House does. Then, it goes back to the Senate for an appropriations bill, then that goes to the House, then they have to get together in conference to make those two bills one bill. Then it goes to the President and he has to sign it. If all that is done by 30 September, then by 1 October there could be budget authority to spend some money. Then we'll see what the Office of Management and Budget wants to say about when that money could actually be written as a cheque. So, between there and here a lot of work is still left to be done and I prefer not to comment any further.

Question: As the bill stands now, do you think it goes far enough to resolve the problem?

Spokesman: The immediate political problem, I would think, is the threat of the loss of vote in the General Assembly so, if it could be, at the end of this long process, enough money could be released by the Congress for the United States to keep its head above water, as far as losing its vote in the General Assembly goes, it was encouraging that the vote was 98 to 1 and that the one vote against was a pro-United Nations position that the bill did not go far enough. It went too far on the conditions, and not far enough on the money, so I think there's clearly a new awareness in the United States of the problem, a new determination to deal with it, and this is a first step in the process, but the problem is not going to be resolved in this year.

Question: How are the developing countries being reassured that they have not been forgotten in the light of the money being spent and attention being paid to Kosovo?

Spokesman: Well, it's forgotten, perhaps in this room, but the daily work of the Secretariat continues even-handedly. I mentioned the programme of the Security Council today. It was not Kosovo, it was the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cyprus, Somalia, Georgia, Eritrea and Ethiopia on the agenda. Also, this is an organization of governments and they are free to spend money in any way they see fit. So, we are appealing for money, not just for Kosovo, we have consolidated appeals out for crisis areas all over the world and it's up to governments to decide where they spend their money.

Question: Was Mary Robinson suggesting a treaty and reconciliation commission that would be run by the Government of Sierra Leone or by the United Nations?

Spokesman: I don't think that was specific in the document that she released, so I would have to direct you to her office to see whether she has one or the other option in mind.

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