PRESS BRIEFING ON HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS IN EAST TIMOR

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING ON HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS IN EAST TIMOR

Following today's noon briefing by the Spokesman for the Secretary-General, David McLachlan-Karr, acting head of the Asia-Latin America section of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), briefed reporters on the current state of humanitarian operations in East Timor.

As the Spokesman had mentioned, airdrops had already been successfully carried out over East Timor in the course of the day. It was expected that these would be followed by a further series of airdrops timed to coincide with the arrival of 300,000 humanitarian daily rations supplied by the United States Government. There would also be deliveries of high-protein biscuits being transported by the World Food Programme (WFP) from South Africa. The staging-base for that effort would be in Darwin, where coordination would be handled by the Australian aid agency AUSAID, the Australian Government, the United Nations system, and the humanitarian coordinator ad interim for the East Timor crisis, Ross Mountain. Mr. Mountain was the overall coordinator appointed by the Secretary-General for the humanitarian response to the East Timor crisis.

The operation itself would be carried out in two phases. The first would cover East Timor itself. Its operational base would be in Darwin, where the various agencies involved would be working together. The phase had already begun with the airdrop programme, aimed at delivering emergency relief. Mr. McLachlan-Karr had just learned from Jakarta that the Government of Indonesia had granted clearance for additional drops on Sunday, Monday and further into next week. “So we don't foresee any problems in that area”, he said. An official of the Government of Indonesia would be accompanying the aircraft. That issue, which had been “small sticking-point at one stage”, had now been resolved.

The second phase of the operation would be deployment of an inter- agency assessment mission, now being assembled in Darwin itself by Mr. Mountain. The OCHA, said Mr. McLachlan-Karr, envisaged a sectoral approach to the provision of assistance. Food and logistics would be under the mandate of the WFP. Shelter and protection and non-food items, particularly for internally displaced persons (IDPs), would be the responsibility of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The UNHCR had staff already on the ground in Dili. Additional UNHCR staff, currently in Darwin, would join the inter-agency assessment mission when it went into the territory. On the health sector, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) were the lead agencies, substantially assisted by two non-governmental organizations (NGO's), Medecins du Monde and Medecins Sans Frontieres. The Oxford Committee for Famine

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Relief (Oxfam) would be overseeing the water and sanitation sector. Education would be the responsibility of UNICEF, which would also be responsible for children and for vulnerable groups in particular. Agriculture in East Timor would come under the aegis of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Allocations of tasks had already begun, based on the premise that a sectoral approach maximized coordination and synergy between NGO's and the United Nations agencies themselves.

Clearly, the biggest questions for provision of assistance on the ground would be security and logistics. The United Nations was looking for donor governments to provide the logistical capability to deliver such assistance. Overland delivery promised to be difficult. The rail link was inadequate, and had sustained considerable damage as a result of the violence of recent weeks. Much of the assistance would have to be delivered by helicopter in the future, and obviously the United Nations would be seeking helicopter support from governments. A further problem was that Dili was probably ninety-five per cent destroyed and looted, creating a very difficult operational environment in which everything had to be started virtually from scratch, with the import of food, catering, accommodation, communications equipment, new vehicles. It would be a very costly and logistically challenging operation to restart basically from scratch in Dili itself.

His office, Mr. McLachlan-Karr went on, anticipated that an “ad interim 'flash appeal'” would soon be launched to notify donors of the absolute priority of immediate assistance needs for funding to enable its programmes to go ahead. It was hoped that the appeal would be issued some time towards the end of next week, on the basis of the interagency assessment that would hopefully begin at the start of the week.

One of the major elements of the whole programme was, of course, military coordination with humanitarian agencies. Mr. McLachlan told his listeners that his office envisaged creating a Civilian Military Operations Centre (CMOC) in Darwin. The CMOC was already in the process of creation, following discussions with the Government of Australia, and personnel from the United Nations Disaster Relief Committee (UNDARC) had been deployed from Geneva to set up the CMOC and a logistics cell for coordination of agency activities. The Governments of Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom had donated supplies that included logistics equipment to help set up operations in Dili as soon as possible.

Turning briefly to West Timor, he said that the situation there was very serious, with at least 172,000 people reported by the Government of Indonesia to have been displaced by the violence in East Timor. Access to the area - which was, of course, a province of Indonesia itself - had to be negotiated with the Government of Indonesia. Indeed, intense negotiations were now under way in Jakarta over the question of access. As the Spokesman had mentioned, Sadako Ogata (UNHCR) would shortly arrive in Jakarta to head those

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negotiations, which were aimed at obtaining humanitarian access to allow the IDPs to return in safety to their homes in East Timor. So far, the indications were positive, and it appeared that the Government of Indonesia was being cooperative. The United Nations was hoping to open a coordination agency in Kupang, the capital of West Timor, as soon as possible, and he understood that the governor of the province had given that project the green light. But once again, security was a problem. The United Nations would also have to negotiate with the militia on the ground, as well as with the Indonesian army, to ensure the protection of humanitarian workers and supplies. He reminded reporters that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UNHCR had been forced to withdraw from West Timor after attacks by mobs throwing stones and destroying United Nations property. But it was hoped that agencies would soon be back in the area.

A reporter asked how the United Nations found and identified militia and other parties with whom to negotiate the issues involved. Mr. McLachlan-Karr said that there were many factions, many groups that had reacted adversely to the pro-independence vote expressed by the people of East Timor. Obviously, there were certain gradations: the pro-independence people, the pro-autonomy people, and in between a whole range of disgruntled people -- including plantation owners who saw the pro-independence vote in East Timor as a threat to their property. However, his Office was now receiving reports of a westward movement of militia out of East Timor, a development that probably coincided with news of the imminent arrival of the multinational force. Contacts on the ground with the Indonesian army had been relatively cooperative in the last two days. The Indonesian military had helped the ICRC's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs convoys to go to Dare. They had secured the area, lent trucks and provided escorts to allow food supplies (rice and biscuits) into Dare - the first surface resupply that had been undertaken. Clearly, therefore, there were very close consultations with the Indonesian Government and the military commanders on the ground.

Asked about levels of official Indonesian cooperation in granting access to Dili itself, Mr. McLachlan said that real access indeed remained elusive because of continuing violence. Dili appeared to be relatively stable -- tense but calm -- and as he had just stated, recent Indonesian military cooperation had enabled humanitarian assistance to reach the neediest areas.

A reporter asked why -- given past experience -- a mechanism had not been set up to ensure that humanitarian assistance reached crisis zones in time. In the case of East Timor, he said, help had come too late.

Mr. McLachlan-Karr replied that emergency operations could only be mounted with the support of governments. However, planning in conjunction with the resident coordinator in Jakarta had been under way for many months for the current contingency. Contingency plans had, in fact, been put in place. The United Nations did not possess the

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aircraft to deliver planned assistance. Only now were governments providing the Organization with the requisite airlift capacity. During the past weeks of violence, he said, it had not been possible for United Nations agencies to deliver assistance without protection. Although they had not all withdrawn, it was self-evident that they were not in a position to carry out their humanitarian mission. Now, obviously, the need was for security on the ground, as well as for the logistics and airlift capacity that could only be provided by governments. “We're doing our best”, he said.

Asked about the conduct of negotiations prior to Ms. Ogata's imminent arrival in Jakarta, he replied that the chief negotiator on humanitarian operations was Ross Mountain, the assistant emergency relief coordinator. He had been in Jakarta, and was now in Darwin. In Jakarta, Mr. Mountain had held discussions with the resident coordinator and the United Nations country team, representing the United Nations system on the ground. In Darwin, he was assembling the inter-agency mission and also speaking to the Australian Government and lead donors. In Dili, he would perform the same tasks, and it was hoped that at some stage he would move to Kupang. Obviously, one person could not manage coordination of the whole operation. In Jakarta itself, the resident coordinator and Mr. Joel Bhutru, from the humanitarian affairs office in Geneva, would be handling negotiations on the airdrops and also on the establishment of a team for West Timor. He added that Kevin Kennedy, head of OCHA's emergency response branch in New York, had been in Dili throughout the emergency. He was now engaged in negotiations with the Indonesian Government and military authorities in Dili for the ongoing surface resupply of relief items to Dare and other areas.

A reporter asked whether the President of the General Assembly had “any interest” in East Timor. The Spokeswoman for the President, Shirley Brownell, replied that he had referred to it in his acceptance statement to the Assembly. He had also spoken on it in the course of the press conference he held yesterday.

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