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.

**Sierra Leone

Good afternoon. I was just in touch with Sierra Leone concerning the hostage situation there. The government has been negotiating with the rebel group that has been holding a number of Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG), United Nations and journalist hostages. And we're told that we expect now that the remaining hostages will be released. I think that you saw the press report that a number of them have been released over the weekend. There are about 20 remaining, and the arrangements they tell us that they've made are for those people all to be returned by this evening. So keep your fingers crossed that that goes through as planned.

**Kosovo

We just spoke to Pristina and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has begun making ad hoc payments to local civil servants. This is just the beginning of what will eventually have to be, with the financial support of the international community, if we get it, payments for up to 50,000 civil servants. But we are starting slow: 39 individuals this week -- judges, prosecutors and customs officers -- will get what are called "ad hoc payments". We haven't yet worked out a salary scale, so this is like a stipend, pending the establishment of a salary scale. And the next targets for such payments -- which we hope would be made in about a week's time -- will be health workers, firefighters and teachers.

Meanwhile, 5 post offices have opened up in Pristina. This is mainly to facilitate the payment by Belgrade of pensions. There are about 25,000 pensioners in the greater Pristina area who haven't been paid since March, I believe. The payments are normally made through the post office, and by opening these post offices we have now given Belgrade the facility they say they need to resume these back payments. So we hope that will happen normally.

**East Timor

Today in Dili, the Code of Conduct for Participants in the East Timor Popular Consultation was signed by representatives of the parties as well as by the Secretary-General's Special Representative.

At the signing ceremony, the Special Representative, Ian Martin, noted that the Code provides for both sides to campaign freely without disruption or obstruction. It commits participants in the campaign to avoid inflammatory or

defamatory language, and they must avoid and condemn political violence or intimidation. They are not to respond to provocation by others, except by reporting it to the Indonesian police and to the United Nations Administrative Mission in East Timor (UNAMET).

Mr. Martin told reporters that the spirit of cooperation between the parties and the discussion of the code of conduct had been excellent. "And", he said, "if that spirit of cooperation is maintained and reflected locally in all parts of the Territory, then I trust we can look forward to a peaceful campaign".

That campaign will begin, as agreed, this Saturday, the 14th of August. We have copies of the code as well as a transcript of the signing ceremony in my office.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, UNAMET announced the preliminary registration statistics. With one day left for registration at the external centres, but registration closed at all centres within East Timor, a total of over 446,000 people had taken part. Of those, some 900 were rejected, mostly by reason of being under age. Yet they will have the chance to appeal.

There are more details in the transcript of the Saturday briefing, which is also available in my office.

**International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia

This morning in The Hague, Vinko Martinovic, who is also known as "Stela", was transferred from the custody of the Croatian authorities to the detention facility of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Martinovic was indicted by the Tribunal in December of last year together with Mladen Naletilic, who is also known as "Tuta", for their alleged involvement in the ethnic cleansing of Mostar in 1993-1994. Only Martinovic has been surrendered to the Tribunal by the Croatian authorities.

You can get details in a press release in my office.

**Food and Agriculture Organization in Africa

We have a press release from FAO concerning Africa. Nearly 10 million people in sub-Saharan Africa need emergency food assistance, according to a report released today by FAO.

In Somalia alone, 1 million people are facing serious food shortages, with over 400,000 at risk of starvation.

In Ethiopia, the report estimates that more than 5 million people need emergency food aid, including 385,000 who have been displaced by the war with Eritrea.

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 9 August 1999

The FAO report calls the food outlook for Angola "very bleak", with 1 million new internally displaced people in need of emergency food aid there.

We have the press release available in my office.

**Radio Feed on Kosovo

I am told, as a public service announcement here, that our International Broadcast Centre in the basement of this complex has a 57 minute radio feed from Kosovo which will be broadcast after the briefing on MX 08 and IBX telephone 058. It is a report on the United Nations Mission there and its activities, its cooperation with KFOR and rehabilitation and restoration services. So, listen to that if you are interested.

That is all I have for you. Any questions? Wake up now, come on.

Question: The Secretary-General is meeting with Anthony Lake right now. Can we have a read-out?

Answer: Okay, we'll do that for you.

Question: The Secretary-General is travelling to Geneva this week. Can you expand on what his travel plans are?

Answer: Geneva is it. And then he is going to take some leave until the end of the month. The Geneva event is organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It is the fiftieth anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, and they have a whole programme planned for Thursday. The Secretary-General will leave New York on Wednesday, arriving in Geneva late Wednesday, and then he will participate in this programme. He will also have some bilateral meetings while he is there, and then he will take some rest.

Question: So he will be out of the United Nations until when?

Answer: Until the end of August, the first days of September, whenever the weekend falls. I'm not quite sure, but I think that around 2 September he is back.

Question: Can you give us some more detail on the payroll of 50,000? Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost? Is everybody in the government going to be on the United Nations payroll? How much do you expect to be paid for by Member States? How much is going to come from customs taxation and tax collection?

Answer: I am not sure if those details have been worked out. 50,000 is an approximate figure that the Mission came up with a few weeks ago. As I mentioned, this is a stipend pending the definition of a salary scale for these 50,000 people. For the 39 -- judges, prosecutors and customs officials - - the hard figure, although I don't know for what period this is, is DM 14,000. And I'd have to ask whether that is for a week's work, a month's work; I don't know. But as it is a stipend, or an ad hoc payment, it is not really pegged to a salary figure yet.

Daily Press Briefing - 4 - 9 August 1999

The Mission appealed to the international community to contribute money for the payment of these civil servants, at least to cover the earliest payments. I think that eventually, when customs duties get collected and taxes get collected, that then the civil servants will be paid out of those revenues. The intention is not to ask the international community to indefinitely pay the Kosovar civil service, but for an initial period they are being asked to pay. How much money we have in the bank, I don't know. I believe that [United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Management] Joseph Connor said that of the over $100 million that the Member States were assessed for the Kosovo mission at the end of June, we have collected exactly zero. Payments, of course, are due 30 days from the date of notification. In theory we should have collected more than $100 million by the end of July, and we haven't gotten a dollar yet.

I think we will continue to experience these growing pains at the beginning of the mission, but the hope is that the support will be there to get everything up and running, and that these people will be paid as they should be, and then eventually paid out of public revenues instead of contributions by the international community.

Question: Over the weekend, General Jackson talked about the KLA losing control over their own members. Is there any sense within the United Nations that relations are breaking down between the KLA and the United Nations Mission?

Answer: I saw that report of that interview and I haven't gotten any comment from our people. We did begin deploying police over the weekend, but initially just patrolling with KFOR. I mentioned on Friday that we would have these containers placed at "hot spots" around Pristina. Their plan is to put between 10 and 20 of these containers in different areas. The hope is that things will calm down there. Three thousand international police monitors, and a similar number of local police that still need to be recruited and trained, may not be enough to deal with the kind of law-and-order problems that we see emerging. Whether it is a result of the KLA losing control, or whether it is just the criminality that you might expect when the social order has broken down and you are trying to rebuild it fast, I think that the jury is still out on that question. But for the moment we have not considered any additional members for the police. We are grateful for the work KFOR has been doing in the security area, and, as I say, I hope that things will start to normalize. That is the purpose of our being there: to get Kosovo back to some semblance of civil order.

Daily Press Briefing - 5 - 9 August 1999

Question: There was a special trust fund set up for the purpose of paying the civil servants. Could you find out how much money was actually paid. I think that there were some contributions.

Answer: I think so too, and assume by the fact that they are beginning to pay something out, that they have gotten something in. But I will try to get the exact number for you.

Question: Is Sergio Vieira de Mello coming?

Answer: Oh, I am sorry, I forgot to mention this to you. We announced that he would be here today. He asked if it could be postponed by a few days because of some other commitments he had today. He will be here, tentatively we said Thursday, but sometime this week he will be here to talk to you about Africa, but I assume he'll take any questions you put to him.

Question: The recent events in Mitrovica were dealt with mainly by the KFOR troops there. How would you comment on these events, and what is the scope of your engagement there, although you are not directly involved with the police monitors?

Answer: Politically, our objective is to try to get the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians to live together peacefully. And KFOR, responsible for peace and security in Mitrovica, in their judgment, the best way to do that was to limit direct contact between the two communities to reduce the chance of incidents of violence. We will just say that we are grateful that KFOR is carrying out that security function. Over the longer term we will have a political infrastructure in that area, as in the rest of the country, and we will be playing a kind of interlocutor between the communities to try to reduce tensions. But for the moment it is a security problem, and KFOR is handling that.

Question: When you said "police monitors", are you really restricting the function of the police officers there? How do you respond to Martti Ahtisaari's comment that it is nonsense to engage that small number of 3,500 policemen?

Answer: In this mission, unusually, the international police have executive functions, and are armed. It is only in Haiti [besides Kosovo] that our police are armed. They do have law-and-order functions and we have been stricter in our recruitment of international police for this function. And, as I mentioned, they will have to train an indigenous police force. I saw Martti Ahtisaari's comment, but as I said, our hope is that things will start to settle down. If 3,000 police -- of which we have 602, I think, today -- are not enough to deal with the law-and-order concerns that exist in Kosovo today, we would hope that in a month's time, in two months' time, things would settle down, that we would not be dependent on the 40,000, or whatever there are, KFOR troops, who themselves are not yet deployed to the full strength

Daily Press Briefing - 6 - 9 August 1999

authorized. It is going to be a struggle, that is clear. But the hope is that between the military and the growing police presence we will be able to re- establish law and order in Kosovo.

Question: Can you brief us about the new press guidelines?

Answer: This goes back to when Kofi Annan was Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping and we were talking about the desirability of having press guidelines. It was decided at that time that rather than for one department we should have Secretariat-wide guidelines. Carl Paschke of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) took an interest in this issue and eventually recommended that press guidelines be developed. We went through drafts in '96, '97, '98, and it is now '99, so I guess it has been almost a 4- year effort, but we finally have them in plain English, and if you want a copy, you can pick them up in my office. It is Mr. Paschke's recommendation now that these be issued as a Secretary-General's Bulletin to make it even more official than it already is. So we have sent it to the legal department to be redrafted in more correct language that might be a little more difficult to understand, but which will come out as an official United Nations document. You can have the draft now, which is the simple-English description of the policy, and eventually it will come out as an official document.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

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