TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN AT GENEVA, ON 23 NOVEMBER

Press Release
SG/SM/7232/Rev.1*

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN AT GENEVA, ON 23 NOVEMBER

__________

* Revised to include text translated from the French.

GENEVA, 23 November (UN Information Service) -- Following is the transcript of the press conference given today by Secretary-General Kofi Annan on 23 November at the United Nations Office in Geneva at the global launch of the Consolidated Inter- agency Appeals for the year 2000 on behalf of humanitarian organizations. The Secretary-General was accompanied by Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Carolyn McAskie, acting Emergency Relief Coordinator. The press conference was held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

MANOEL DE ALMEIDA E SILVA, DEPUTY SPOKESPERSON FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL: Thank you for coming. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has launched the appeal earlier today and he is accompanied by Ms. McAskie, Emergency Relief Coordinator ad interim, and High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata, who just returned from the Russian Federation where she had meetings as a Special Envoy for the Secretary-General. The Secretary-General has brief opening remarks and then we will move on to questions and answers.

SECRETARY-GENERAL: Thank you very much, Manoel. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I will be very brief because I think you all had a chance to listen to the speeches and I trust you have seen copies of the statements made by the heads of programmes and funds at the launch of the Consolidated Appeal. In addition to the Consolidated Appeal on which you have material and you can ask questions, we can also discuss Mrs. Ogata’s trip to the Northern Caucasus. As most of you know, I had a long discussion with Prime Minister Putin and agreed with him that Mrs. Ogata would go as my Special Envoy to assess the situation on the ground and to determine how we can enhance our humanitarian assistance and to seek the cooperation of the Russian authorities. She has had a very interesting trip and would also be prepared to share briefly with you her findings and take questions on that. But I would suggest if you do not mind that we devote the first part of the question and answer period to the Consolidated Appeal and then on to Chechnya. The floor is open.

Question: Welcome back Mr. Secretary-General and thank you very much for giving us this press conference. I wondered if you could begin by telling us why you have hired a public relations firm for this year. Of course, you would have had us all here anyway, so I am wondering why you thought it was necessary and how much this is costing?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: I am a bit lost. I am not sure any of us are aware of a public relations firm being hired.

MS. MCASKIE: Obviously, as my first duty with the press in front of the Secretary-General, I certainly do not want to give him the wrong answer. We had hired a consultant to help us with part of the process. The Consolidated Appeal Process, if you have seen all of the documentation, you will know that it’s sixteen times this. They are bringing together the work of all of the agencies and putting it in a format which is constant across the board. This is an enormous task and as is usual when we perform such tasks, we seek outside assistance.

SECRETARY-GENERAL: In fact, I suspect you also wanted to make it clear and easier for the ladies and gentlemen of the press so that they can have the facts much more clearly and I hope you do not object to that.

Question: Mr. Secretary-General, I have two very brief questions. Do you have anything to tell us about Iraq, the reaction from the United Nations, to their position on “oil for food”, and second, yesterday here the Yugoslav Ambassador said he expects Mr. Bernard Kouchner to be replaced. Do you have any news about that?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: Let me say that on the first one, on the question of Iraq, there are very serious discussions going on in New York about the extension. There has been a bit of a hitch. I think it will be worked out and we will be able to continue our humanitarian operations - the “oil-for-food” operations. With regard to the longer term issue of the Security Council coming up with a new common position that will allow the monitors and inspectors to go back and come up with a list of activities that Iraq will have to undertake and Iraq will have to comply with for sanctions to be suspended or lifted is something that the permanent five in particular and the Council is working on. I would hope that in the not-too-distant future, they will be able to come up with some understanding that will allow the process to move forward because I personally consider that the current impasse is not healthy and we should find a way of resolving it. I think that is precisely what the Council members are doing. With regard to your second question, I have no intention of replacing Bernard Kouchner. He is my representative. He is doing a very good job. In fact, he joined me in Istanbul, where we met quite a lot of the Heads of States and discussed the situation in Kosovo. He is staying and he is going to continue his job. I have no intention of replacing him.

Question: Mr. Secretary-General, today you said that the people for whom we are appealing are suffering as a result of conflict. The question on the Kosovo conflict and consequences. Sir, do you share the concern of many political analysts and experts in the field of this Balkan crisis that non-compliance with United Nations resolution 1244 (1999) is pregnant with very unpleasant consequences as far as the stability in Europe is concerned. In a related aspect, there is a mass concentration of weapons, almost not controlled, and two military bases were created recently -- one in Bosnia, one in Kosovo. This is an arms proliferation. In other arms agreement, are they not also equally jeopardizing any future stability of the continent?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: Before I answer your question, if I may remind you of my request at the beginning, that if we can focus on appeals, the Consolidated Appeals, and then move on to the Chechnya situation. We are beginning to stray all over the place and so at least if we can focus on the two main issues which are why we are here, then we can take on the other questions. So I will note your question and ask if there are other questions on the specific issues and I will come back to your question. I will answer it.

Question: I was just wondering. Maybe I misunderstood but is it true that Mrs. Ogata only has been to Moscow and has not been in the Caucasus region itself?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: I take it that you have all had lots of materials on the consolidated appeals and now I would ask Mrs. Ogata to open the discussion.

MRS. OGATA: I went to Moscow and to Ingushetia and Chechnya on a field visit as the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General and as High Commissioner for Refugees. In Ingushetia, I visited two refugee camps and the train carriages and host families that are hosting most of the displaced persons. I visited a hospital. I also went to a border crossing and then I went to north-western Chechnya, I visited a rural centre -- and in Moscow I met a lot of the authorities. The Minister of Emergency, the Minister of Foreign Affairs twice, the Minister of Emergency twice too, before I went on the field visit and on return, and also the Prime Minister, as well as all the agency colleagues.

Question: Mr. Secretary-General, are you very hopeful or just hopeful that you will get all the money you are asking for?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: I’ve been around for a while so I cannot say I am very hopeful. Yes, I am hopeful that I will get the money I have asked for and we need it desperately.

Question: Mrs. Ogata, can you give an overview of what kind of answers you have got from the authorities in Moscow? Can you give an assessment? What’s the outcome of your trip?

MRS. OGATA: Before going to Russia, there were signals from the Government that they were not asking for assistance although they would welcome if they come. Now the attitude of the Russian authorities has become much more open and the Prime Minister clearly stated that he needed the support and wanted to cooperate with the United Nations, especially he made a point that he wanted the assistance to come to reach the people who are really in need. Now, this is a very tall order. Maybe I should say that two weeks ago an interagency mission, consisting of United Nations agencies, was able to make an assessment mission of the needs, and we had some ideas of the needs. Now to put the needs into a package and to provide them required very close coordination and consultation with the authorities. One of the reasons why there was this hesitancy is of course the attitude of the Russian Government but also Chechnya, Ingushetia, the northern Caucasus are crime ridden areas. It is very, very full of criminality, hostage-taking and you probably know that one of my colleagues was hostage for 317 days, and that is not an exception. What kind of security and safety assurance can we get? So we had already worked out certain modalities of placing some of the national staff and how to cover through by sending international staff who would be more exposed to these security related measures and so these were the negotiations that we went to Y I went to complete. The authorities are very much ready to examine how we could cover the security issue and there will be very clear responses coming from the Prime Minister and the Foreign Ministry. Now on the assessment of the refugee situation there, they were good, yes, but at the same time most of the refugees -- there were about 30,000 in Ingushetia in four campsites. I visited two, and although they were good to some extent, that was clearly not sufficient. Besides, the sanitary conditions were not adequate, the distribution system was not adequate and there were enough problems where our own support and inputs would be useful, and this was something clearly I felt. I made that very clear to the authorities and they were willing to take it. Now, so there, we have to overcome the safety issues. We would be cautious in placing our colleagues in the right place and also trying to bring in international staff as possible and as necessary because we do have to monitor what goes to whom and this is something that the authorities themselves would be open to do. We would direct our assistance more to host families. More than 60-70 per cent of the people are in host families and I stopped by and visited five or six of them. The Ingush families are very generous people. I think some of them had up to 60 people in their houses -- 20-25 was average. So we have to package assistance to the families in order that they can take these people and an extended stay in host families requires careful provision of assistance because they get tired too. And so what we are proposing now is to package assistance to host families primarily and that also this package would benefit the refugees as well. So this is a very quick overview of what you ask.

SECRETARY-GENERAL: The only thing I would want to add is that I met earlier this afternoon with all the agencies and funds involved in the humanitarian assistance in the northern Caucasus and they will continue and they found Mrs. Ogata’s visit very helpful and they will, we will pool our efforts to have greater impact.

Question: I just wanted to follow up on Chechnya because the flash appeal document says quite clearly that the security situation precludes deploying international staff even in Dagestan and Ingushetia and I just wondered what prospects you see through your contacts with the Russian authorities of deploying further and actually getting in closer to Chechnya, if not to Chechnya itself.

MRS. OGATA: We have our base in Stavropol and this is where we shall maintain our base. At the same time UNHCR has four internationals there and we would like to double it. Also, we would have our base in Vladikafkas, where we would be placing more of the national staff. But we would keep the international staff mobile as possible so that they would go on visit for three days or up to a week as required and this is the way we foresee the security arrangements. There are several ways of arranging the security, this is the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Emergency, federal and local, the Federal Migration Services, the English Government itself and currently the Foreign Ministry is trying to coordinate all the possible security assurances. We have to be cautious and the people who will be sent to these places will have to be very, very disciplined. At the same time I think there is some breakthrough in trying to get clearer and more determined coverage of security by the Government since the time this appeal was launched.

Question: Mr. Secretary-General, this is a question for the diplomat, not necessarily for the Secretary-General. I am very confused; I am no longer clear what is meant by humanitarian intervention. I know that the United Nations has several times acknowledged its errors in relation to past problems. I am thinking of Rwanda, Bosnia and the Congo and of quite recent events: Kosovo, Timor and now Chechnya. So, when is humanitarian intervention necessary, possible and admissible and when is it not?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: This is one of the questions we will come to at the end. Lets stay with the humanitarian issue.

Question: I have one question for the Secretary-General and one or two for Mrs. Ogata. Secretary -General, could you tell us what you think would be needed now from the humanitarian point of view to be done for the Chechen people. I mean we always speak about the refugees in Ingushetia but there are hundreds of thousands still in Chechnya. And what is your assessment after Mrs. Ogata’s visit?

And to Mrs. Ogata I would also ask the question. Did you have contact also with the Chechen Government of Maskhadov and don’t you think it's necessary? I mean nobody speaks about that and what happens to the people over there. And during your visit into Chechnya did you have contact with the local population and what needs do they have?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: I think your first question is also linked to the second. But let me say briefly that obviously there is military action going on in Chechnya and in the midst of that it should be difficult for us to go in and offer humanitarian assistance. There are parts which are perhaps not in direct military conflict that eventually one may be able to offer some assistance if need be. But for the time being we are concentrating on Ingushetia and the territories outside Chechnya. But down the line if assistance is required in Chechnya, obviously we will need to discuss further with the Russian authorities to see if there is anything we can do to assist.

MRS. OGATA: When we went to this rural centre in north-western Chechenya, we did get out of the military helicopter that we were in and we walked around. We visited a school where the schoolmistress had just come back three days ago from exile. We went to a hospital where they were carrying out an amputation kind of surgery. So it was beginning to function but this was an area that had come under government control just a few weeks ago. And so much of the northern part of Chechnya has come under government control. As the Secretary-General has said, the second largest city has also come under government control. But in the capital, Grozny, there is a very big military operation going on. We heard bombs all the time we were in the area.

The question of what we would do in Chechnya itself is related to one issue that the Government has raised and this is some of the people who are refugees in Ingushetia, they want to go back or maybe it would be better to move transients out of Ingushetia which is very crowded to the northern part of Chechnya. But our position very clearly is that all return to Chechnya has to be voluntary and there the Russian authorities did not dispute it. At the same time if they were to go back to certain parts under government control, I would hope very much that those who go back are either from that particular area or have relatives there. And so this return is not totally unforeseen but we are not yet planning for it and I think it is in this context that whatever happens in Chechnya will be also of some humanitarian concern, but not yet.

Question: I didn’t hear from any humanitarian agency in the last weeks any concern on the fate of the civil population under the control of the Chechen Government still. I mean you must have an idea what the situation is in Grozny -- you must have contacts in the region, or you must have people you know that fled, that told you what’s going on. What’s your assessment on that?

MRS. OGATA: The Mufti of Gudermes who came to see us in Moscow was very clear in explaining what a difficult situation the refugees who fled were in and many of the refugees had come from Grozny, they said they were terrified but if the bombing and so on ended they would like to go back even if they were terrified and very worried. So this was clearly civilian victims of the conflict and this is something that I raised very clearly with the authorities: spare the civilians. This is a message that was very clear but as for the political contacts, I do not have any political contacts with the people who are fighting this war.

Question: This is a question addressed to the Secretary-General. I would like to know how on Chechnya you conceive the role of the United Nations on a political level? What should the United Nations do politically about Chechnya?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: One more question on the humanitarian side and I will take all the political questions.

Question: Secretary-General, earlier this year you were on the same podium with business leaders from around the world. Do you expect the business community to write a few cheques to meet this $2.4 billion appeal, or even surpass it? And my second question is the tremendous problems we are hearing from United Nations agencies on lack of auditing of non-governmental organizations who are tapping into the humanitarian funds. Will that be improved?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: As far as I know, no private company has offered to write any cheques for any of the humanitarian assistance. But I know that in some areas we are getting lots of help from them. For example, the Gates Foundation just gave $26 million to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and I suspect we will be hearing of other major grants from private foundations and private sectors to help some of the United Nations activities. As far as a specific appeal is concerned, I am not aware of any cheques from the private sector -- are you?

MRS. OGATA: Not yet. But we are waiting.

SECRETARY-GENERAL: On the second question of non-governmental organizations, my colleagues tell me that they are audited, maybe we should do a better audit, but they are audited and they play an important role in the humanitarian activities and we are interested in seeing them well organized and effective and I don’t know if Sadako or Carolyn, you want to say something about that?

MRS. MCASKIE: Just that we have a very close relationship with the NGOs. They are often first out there and they are often also implementing partners. As such we have daily contacts with them and we do have in some cases contractual arrangements which are subject to normal audit procedures. I personally am not aware of any specific question through the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs but just to say that it is a critical issue and something that we would take seriously if complaints were brought to our attention.

SECRETARY-GENERAL: I think that was the last question on the humanitarian issue and I have three questions on other issues.

The first was Kosovo and the implementation of resolution 1244 (1999). I think we are determined to do our best in implementing 1244. My special representative Bernard Kouchner and his team and KFOR are trying very hard. Obviously it is a very difficult situation and we are aware of the tensions on the ground. We have a mandate to administer Kosovo as an autonomous region of the former Yugoslav Republic. But the people on the ground that we are supposed to administer see themselves as independent or eventually independent. So obviously there is a tension there that we have to manage. We have to manage that tension and other ambiguities, but we are determined to respect our mandate. Another difficult area is the treatment of minorities which we have tried to protect. The KFOR and Bernard Kouchner in the United Nations team are doing their best. We have a little over 1,500 police. We need more policemen and women on the ground and we are appealing to governments to make them available to us. The question of protecting every individual has become a very difficult issue. You have to blanket the area with quite a lot of policemen which we do not have. The military are not trained for that sort of policing work. Given the limitations I think we are trying to do the best we can. But let me assure you that we are not seeing our mandate as a mandate that is preparing Kosovo for independence. We have a limited mandate to administer it as part of Yugoslavia and that is what we are doing despite the difficulties.

With regard to arms proliferation, whether it is in Kosovo or in Bosnia or in Congo or Angola, it is something that none of us can condone. The presence of arms per se does not provoke conflict, but the likelihood of a conflict being provoked and sustained is always much higher when you do have proliferation of weapons and that is one of the reasons why as part of the functions of KFOR they were required to disarm the UCK. Obviously there has been some debate as to whether they have been effectively disarmed or not, but the question of demilitarization was very much part of the mandate.

The other question that has been posed is the question of intervention. Kosovo, East Timor, Chechnya: When is the United Nations going to intervene?

First of all let me be quite clear here. When it comes to intervention, I define intervention as a continuum from the most benign diplomatic action to use of force in the extreme cases where it may become necessary. I define intervention as any action that may help stop violence, any action that may improve the lot of people in conflict situations, any action that could contain a conflict. It is not necessarily force, and I think in each of the cases that you have referred to, there has been some sort of intervention. There has been some sort of action. As Mrs. Ogata indicated in Chechnya, we sent in an interagency team earlier. She herself has just been to Chechnya and we are taking steps to enhance our humanitarian activities. On the political front at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Summit in Istanbul, the heads of States and governments of the OSCE discussed this issue with President Yeltsin and offered to mediate and I think we all know the results. What has been agreed to is that the chairman in exercise of OSCE will visit the region and we will take it from there. I think I have answered all the questions which were posed and I want to thank you, ladies and gentlemen, very much for coming to this press conference.

* *** *