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 to the briefing the Chairman of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Habitat Balkans Task Force, Pekka Haavisto. He will speak on the results of the recently concluded mission to assess the environmental impact of the Balkans conflict on the region's worst-damaged industrial sites. We will get to him in just a minute.

**Sierra Leone

Yesterday a team of the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL), that was escorted by the West African peace-keeping force of the Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG), as well as by a Sierra Leonean bishop and local journalists, at a location 70 kilometres from Freetown, was taken hostage by a rebel group of Sierra Leone, not the RUF. They had gone to this location to secure the release of 100 children, who had been abducted by the rebels. Instead of releasing the children, as promised the previous day, the rebels detained the delegation and presented them with some grievances as a condition for their release, as well as the children's release. Later in the day, they released the bishop, as well as the United Nations spokeswoman and three military observers.

Concerted efforts are under way to secure the immediate release of the team.

I have the following statement attributable to the Spokesman.

The Secretary-General is deeply concerned at the detention, in Ocra Hills on 4 August, by an armed Sierra Leonean group, of United Nations military observers and civilian personnel, the Nigerian ECOMOG troops who escorted them, as well as local journalists. The Secretary-General deplores this serious incident and urges the armed group to release all detainees immediately and without any conditions. He also calls on the Government of Sierra Leone and RUF leader Foday Sankoh, as well as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and its military group ECOMOG, to do their utmost to seek the earliest release of all detained personnel and to ensure the safety and security of all international staff assisting the Sierra Leonean people to implement the Lome peace agreement. (See Press Release SG/SM/7089- AFR/162.)

**Iraq

The Secretary-General is expected to submit to the Security Council today the report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

(OPCW) on the clean-up of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) laboratory in Baghdad.

The OPCW team, accompanied by a biological weapons expert from Germany, found and destroyed about 250 grams of mustard gas and a small amount of VX gas used by UNSCOM to calibrate laboratory equipment.

**Kosovo

The Secretary-General's Special Representative for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, yesterday met for the first time jointly with Kosovo's two most prominent ethnic Albanian leaders, Ibrahim Rugova of the LDK party and Hassim Thaci of the KLA. They both assured him they would participate in the next meeting of the Kosovo Transitional Council which is scheduled for Monday.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kouchner's principal deputy, Jock Covey, met with Deputy Foreign Minister Nebojsa Vujovic, the head of Yugoslavia's Liaison Office in Kosovo, to discuss the continuing concern over the security of the Kosovo Serbs.

**East Timor

We hear from Dili, East Timor, today that while registration continues to go well, the process has been marred by two fresh security incidents affecting the staff of the United Nations Administrative Mission to East Timor (UNAMET) there.

In the first incident, some 20 men, believed to be local militia, attacked a group of students who were in front of a registration site in the electoral region of Suai. According to a United Nations civilian police officer who was there, the attacking mob turned over plastic seating and began hurling chunks of concrete at the United Nations staff. The attack lasted no more than six minutes before the mob fled and civilian police restored calm.

The second incident took place in Batugade, in the electoral region of Maliana, where a large group of people surrounded the registration site and refused to allow the United Nations staff to leave. Eventually, through negotiations, the staff were allowed to leave the site. Senior UNAMET staff from Dili will visit both of these sites tomorrow to learn more about these incidents.

Meanwhile, more than 428,000 people have registered for the popular consultation. A UNAMET spokesman told reporters in Dili today that the Mission has completed the registration of prisoners throughout East Timor: more than 250 in total have been registered. And yesterday, a prominent Timorese leader registered: Xanana Gusmao, in Jakarta.

We have copies of the briefing notes in my office.

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 5 August 1999

**Security Council

Today, the Security Council is discussing Afghanistan. They are being briefed by the Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Alvaro de Soto. The hostage crisis in Sierra Leone is expected to come up under "other matters".

Tomorrow the Council is expected to be briefed on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Bernard Miyet.

**Disarmament

Yesterday afternoon, after our noon briefing, the Secretary-General met with former Under-Secretary-General Yasushi Akashi and Ambassador Nobuo Matsunaga of the Japan Institute of International Affairs. They were the co- chairs of the Tokyo Forum for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, and they presented the Secretary-General with the Forum's report, "Facing Nuclear Dangers: An Action Plan for the Twenty-first Century".

Following that meeting, we issued a statement welcoming the recommendations contained in the report, which the Secretary-General hopes the international community will study with a view to reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons in the world. He also commended Japan's timely initiative in assembling a group of eminent international personalities to address the urgent issues of nuclear disarmament and nuclear proliferation.

The statement, if you missed it, is still upstairs in my office (Press Release SG/SM/7088-DC/2657 of 4 August).

**Indigenous People

Next Tuesday will be the International Day of the World's Indigenous People. As part of this observance, there is an exhibit of Australian Aboriginal art in the public lobby of this building. The exhibit, which is titled "Aboriginal Art and the Dreamtime", will be officially opened next week, but the artists will be down there painting during the whole month and they have started today, and we invite you to go watch them work.

East Timorese leader Jose Ramos-Horta will meet with correspondents at 1 p.m. today at the invitation of the Correspondents Association, to discuss the upcoming ballot in East Timor, and that will take place in the UNCA lounge. All correspondents are invited.

That is all I have for you before we go to Mr. Haavisto. Any questions?

Question: Yesterday, when we spoke with Mr. Ramos-Horta, he said that he was going to register in Sydney. Can you confirm that it was actually in New York that he registered?

Daily Press Briefing - 4 - 5 August 1999

Answer: I'll have to double-check that. [It was later announced that Mr. Ramos-Horta planned to register on Sydney.]

Question: The hostage crisis, as you call it, will that imperil the plans to send further military observers there?

Answer: I don't think we are ready to say what impact it will have. It appears to involve soldiers that were not directly involved in the peace process. And it is a very specific set of demands they are making. Our position at this point is: no conditions, release our people, and let's get on with the peace process.

Question: Could there be a reassessment of sending more observers?

Answer: I am not prepared to say that. Our hope is that this can be resolved quickly and peacefully, and that it will have no impact on the implementation of our peace efforts.

Question: The same question on the Congo. Is the reported bombing of two villages in the Congo expected to affect the deployment of the observers that the Secretary-General is seeking to send?

Answer: I can only repeat what the Secretary-General said coming into the building this morning. He said that we haven't changed our plans. He has been in touch with President Chiluba of Zambia. He said that he expects to hear back from the President by tomorrow with an assessment of the peace efforts for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But he did say that as of now there is no change of plans.

Question: Is there anything known about the investigation into the use of chemical weapons in Sudan? Who are the investigators being sent in, and from what agency?

Answer: To my knowledge, and you'll have to double-check this with the World Food Programme (WFP), they were looking into the health condition of their two workers who had experienced these symptoms -- burning eyes and so on. That was the extent of the investigation to my knowledge. It was not looking into the cause, it was looking into the condition of the workers. But I'll see if we have anything more on that for you later.

Question: Would the Secretary-General like to comment on the new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report on Human Development, especially in light of Jeffrey Sachs's request last year to create a United Nations commission to completely revise the international strategy of international development?

Answer: I am sorry, I have no guidance from him on that subject. I'll have to ask for you.

* *** *