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 near verbatim press transcript of today's noon briefing by John Mills, Acting Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

I would liken to welcome to the briefing today two guests from Mongolia who I am sure are very familiar with the weather we are having here at the moment. Mr. Inkobold and Mr. Ganbold, welcome, and I look forward to seeing you later today.

**East Timor

Our report from East Timor today answers yesterday's question about the transition from the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET) to the United Nations peacekeeping force. Today in the eastern town of Baucau, Major-General Peter Cosgrove, the Commander of INTERFET, formally passed the command of Sector East to General Jaime de Los Santos, the Force Commander of the new United Nations peacekeeping operation. Sector East command has battalions from Thailand, the Philippines and the Republic of Korea, a total of about 2,100 troops, and covers the eastern part of the Territory. After the INTERFET flag was lowered and the United Nations flag raised, General Cosgrove handed over command saying, "I give them to him, to General Dos Santos, with pride, I do so with nostalgia and great honour".

As the ceremony was completed, the soldiers exchanged their INTERFET hats for United Nations blue berets. It is important to note here, that the transition is largely a re-hatting exercise with more than 5,500 of INTERFET’s soldiers coming under United Nations authority over the coming weeks. The projected strength of the United Nations force is around 8,300. The planned hand-over process will be gradual, moving from east to west, and should be completed by the end of the month.

**Chechnya

Turning to Chechnya, the twenty-seventh convoy of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) arrived in Nazran, Ingushetia, this morning. The UNHCR reports that 2,100 people crossed from Chechnya into Ingushetia yesterday. The new arrivals said people -- particularly the elderly and infirm who cannot leave or who refuse to do so -- continue to spend nearly all of their time in dark cellars, with little or no food or medicine. Various estimates say there could be up to 20,000 civilians remaining in Grozny.

According to the Chechens, ethnic Russians who remain in Chechnya, particularly in Grozny, are now living in groups of several to a dozen people in order to share their meagre resources. They, too, are in need of assistance, according to the new arrivals.

Meanwhile, a multi-agency team, comprising United Nations agencies, Russian organizations and international non-governmental organizations travelled to Nazran in Ingushetia today as part of a five-day effort to review the humanitarian situation and determine future assistance requirements. Their findings will form the basis of a new six-month humanitarian appeal for the region. The current appeal, which was well-funded, expires at the end of the month.

Daily Press Briefing - 2 - 1 February 2000

The mission is also tasked with gathering information on the humanitarian situation inside Chechnya.

As you might recall, the Secretary-General, when he was in Moscow last Friday raising his concerns about the situation of the people in Chechnya, said the United Nations would want, if and when the situation permitted, to operate on the Chechen side of the border as well.

**Security Council

There is no meeting of the Security Council today, it being the first of the month. The new President of the Council for February, Ambassador Arnaldo Manuel Listre of Argentina, will hold bilateral meetings with other Council members. Tomorrow afternoon, the Council will meet in an informal session to discuss the programme of work for this month.

**Colombia

Now Colombia. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), in November last year, appealed for $9 million for a two-year programme to provide food and food assistance, including work-for-food programmes, for the internally displaced persons in Colombia. Part of the food-for-work effort was to help build up the infrastructure of some of the internally displaced settlements and avoid a drift into slums surrounding cities.

However, WFP says that it has had to postpone this relief programme because it has received no funding in response to this appeal. When I asked them whether no funding means just a few thousand dollars, they said no, it means zero dollars and zero cents.

The WFP is now going to renew the appeal for financing to give food assistance to 227,000 people who had fled their homes because of the internal armed conflict. There are 1.5 million Colombians who have been internally displaced over the last 15 years -– more than in any other part of the Western Hemisphere. You might have seen WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini's article in a Washington newspaper last Friday, saying the "suffering these people have endured is almost beyond description –- let's not allow these victims of a terrible violence to be forgotten". But two- and-a-half months on, there has been no response to the WFP appeal.

**Central African Republic

Tomorrow in the Central African Republic, the United Nations peacekeeping mission will begin the final phase of its withdrawal, which should be completed by the middle of the month. The Secretary-General, in his final report on this mission, said that the United Nations had provided the people and Government of the Central African Republic with much needed stability and breathing space after a period of serious upheaval. The mission also helped conduct the legislative and presidential elections, with a new Government now in place.

The United Nations will continue its presence in the country with a Peace- building Support Office, to support the Government's effort to consolidate peace and national reconciliation.

**Energy Workshop

Here at Headquarters, a two-day series of educational sessions -- a workshop on global energy issues -- began this morning. Under-Secretary-General for Management Joseph Connors greeted the gathering of experts and said the United Nations is committed to pushing for environmentally responsible energy policies.

This afternoon, workshops discuss deregulation, energy efficiency and global competitiveness, and the session will conclude tomorrow afternoon at 1:15 with a presentation by "futurist" David Pearce Snyder. These meetings are being held in Conference Rooms 4, 5 and 6. Some of you may have been here this morning for the press conference involving Under-Secretary-General Connor and executives from the United States electrical utility Con Edison, which is one of the co-sponsors of this energy workshop. There are press packets available here and certainly up in the Spokesman's Office.

**International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia

The new President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Claude Jorda, arrived this morning for his first visit to New York in his new capacity. During his four-day visit he is scheduled to meet with United Nations officials and with delegations. We are trying to have him here to talk to you on Thursday morning.

Mr. Jorda, a French national, was elected President of the Tribunal last November. At his first press conference, last month, he expressed his worry over the length of the trials at the Tribunal and vowed to find ways to speed them up.

**Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs

This morning, Danilo Turk began his duties as Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, with responsibilities for the Americas and Europe, Asia and the Pacific, the Division for Palestinian Rights and the Decolonization Unit. He said he was honoured to be part of the United Nations Secretariat and looked forward to the learning process.

You might remember Ambassador Turk of course as Slovenia's Ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador Turk was a member of the Security Council for two years until last December.

Ambassador Turk replaces Alvaro de Soto, who as you know is the Secretary- General 's Special Adviser on Cyprus and will shortly be the Special Representative in Cyprus.

**Budget Matters

We have in the Spokesman's Office the Status of Contributions to the Regular, Peacekeeping and International Tribunal budgets, current as of 15 January. It indicates that approximately $3.47 billion is owed by Member States to the United Nations for these budgets; $1.3 billion owed to the regular budget, $2.1 billion for the peacekeeping budget, and around $31.8 million for the international tribunal budgets.

The final number of Member States who met their Charter obligation by the deadline of 31 January, and therefore get on our honour roll, is 43. We missed Armenia, which because of an oversight was omitted from yesterday's roll call. We also have a General Assembly document available, which lists the countries that come under the Article 19 provision of the Charter, which states that "a Member of the United Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years". There are 52 Members under Article 19 at the moment.

**Economic and Social Council

Immediately following this briefing, we will have here Ambassador Makarim Wibisono of Indonesia, the New President of the Economic and Social Council, to discuss his vision for the upcoming session.

Shirley Brownell, the Spokeswoman for the President of the General Assembly, has an announcement and then we will take questions.

**Briefing by Spokeswoman

The General Assembly held a brief meeting this morning, at the outset of which Assembly President Theo-Ben Gurirab offered, on behalf of the Assembly, condolences to the bereaved families, relatives and friends of all those whose lives ended so tragically in the crash of a Kenyan Airways plane off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire on Sunday, and of an Alaskan Airlines plane off the California coast yesterday.

The President announced the designation of the two Vice-Chairpersons of the open-ended working group of the General Assembly on the causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa, which he will chair. They are: Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, Permanent Representative of Singapore; and Ambassador Inocencio Arias, Permanent Representative of Spain. The working group is scheduled to meet in March.

The Assembly appointed Juichi Takahara of Japan as a member of the 16-member Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), through 31 December 2001. Mr. Takahara will serve the remainder of the term of Fumiaki Toya, also of Japan, who has resigned. The related document is A/54/101/Rev.1/Add.1.

Also this morning, the President drew attention to a letter from the Secretary-General (A/54/730) containing a list of 52 Member States that are in arrears in the payment of their financial contributions within the terms of Article 19 of the Charter. The Assembly took note of the information.

Under Article 19, “A Member of the United Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years". Copies of the document, in French, are available in room 378.

This morning, the President met with the Permanent Representative of Pakistan, Ambassador Inamul Haque, for a farewell call. He then met with the incoming and outgoing Presidents of the Executive Board of the World Food Programme, Ambassador Mohammed Saiid Nouri-Naeeni of Iran and Laurie Tracey of the United States. He met, at noon, with the representative of the Polisario, Ambassador Ahmed Boukhari. This afternoon, he will meet with the new President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Judge Claude Jorda.

Acting Deputy Spokesman: Thank you. I should of course mention that the Secretary-General is en route from Geneva to Headquarters and will be in the office tomorrow. Also in Geneva this morning, the talks regarding Cyprus continued. As I mentioned yesterday they had commenced under the aegis of the Secretary-General.

**Questions and Answers

Question: Regarding Colombia, was the press release that you talked about a recent one, because I understand that the United States President William J. Clinton, in his State of the Union message, declared that Colombia was a priority?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: In fact it was not a press release as such. It was a matter raised at the Geneva briefing by the WFP spokesperson there. I spoke to the WFP in Rome and obtained some more information. So at the moment there is not a press release –- we will be going back to the WFP and suggesting that they might like to get more details. But I have given you the details that I was able to glean this morning from the Programme. It is a current and serious concern that they have.

Question: As of today it is zero?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: As of today it is zero. As of half an hour ago when I spoke to Rome it was zero.

Question: That puts the President of the United States in a very bad light because he mentioned that Colombia is a top priority in his State of the Union message.

Question: The number of Members losing their vote in the General Assembly is close to a third of the membership. Has it ever been this high before? And do they then come in and pay within months or is this for the whole year?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: I think the pattern is that the number will go down. We can find whether at the end of January there has ever been this many who are in arrears. We will get back to you on that point and we will announce it tomorrow.

Spokeswoman: It is the start of the new fiscal year and so there are a number of them who are in arrears. But it will go down.

Question: It seems that the Secretary-General and most of the high-ranking officials of the United Nations are talking about Chechnya, and your President is mute about it. Is the issue of any interest to the high personality of the General Assembly President? In the past, Presidents of the Assembly have always intervened in situations like this.

Spokeswoman: Your point is taken and I will raise it with the President.

Question: Can we get some comparative figures on the number of countries in arrears earlier than tomorrow, perhaps this afternoon?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: I will get them this afternoon but I will also make an announcement tomorrow.

Question: Just to follow up on that -– can you put some perspective on these numbers? Is this a record amount of arrears at this date? And also you said yesterday that 43 was a record or recent record for paying on time.

Acting Deputy Spokesman: It was 11 above the number who had paid on time last year. That was the only reference made yesterday.

Question: Is this a recent record?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: Well, $3.47 billion -– we will check that for you. It certainly does look extremely high and the persistent high level of indebtedness in the peacekeeping sectors is worrying.

Question: I had information that the Secretary-General will visit Indonesia this month. Could you explain his schedule and the purpose of the visit?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: We have already given the details of the Secretary- General's schedule. He is planning to visit Jakarta as part of an Asian tour. He will also be visiting Australia. We will be trying to make available to interested correspondents some kind of briefing, possibly on background, on the details of the Secretary-General's schedule and what he is trying to achieve during his Asian visit. That will hopefully take place in the next few days.

Question: At the briefing last Friday there was short summary of a human rights report out of Sierra Leone. Is that full report available or is it not going to be given out?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: We believed that we were going to be able to give that report out and were expecting it to arrive. We were discussing it this morning. The report itself did not arrive. We have gone back to our mission in Sierra Leone and tried to find out what was the problem. There is a lot happening on the human rights front in the country. We have had a human rights component there for some time. It has been strengthened and we will be talking to the mission there and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to see if there is a way of providing you, on a more timely basis, with the information and the concerns they have on their missions. As for that particular report, we are still trying to find out if we can put it out.

Question: Some non-governmental organizations, I believe among them, Doctors without Borders, have declared that there was a violation of international humanitarian law in Chechnya. What would the Secretary-General or the Legal Department think of such a point of view?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: I am not going presume to speak on behalf of the Legal Department. But you saw from the Secretary-General's concerns about the protection of the rights of people in Chechnya that he shares a concern about the need to respect the rights, including the rights under international humanitarian law, of the civilians in Chechnya. Which is why, in his discussions in Moscow and since, he has referred to the need for proportionality in any response to terrorism.

Question: Going back to the very large number of refugees crossing from Chechnya to Ingushetia, was the UNHCR doing anything? Are there sufficient supplies, is there not aid to help them, and is this the beginning of some new massive outpouring of those who are left in Chechnya?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: I think we have detailed to you on a pretty regular basis the size of the humanitarian relief operation happening in the area. The appeal was for $16.2 million for a three-month emergency period. That got a very good response. About $14.3 million was raised. So if you assume that the appeal was designed to meet the needs, it would look as if there are resources being made

available to respond to the anticipated needs. The convoy that arrived in Nazran, Ingushetia this morning, was the twenty-seventh convoy. So clearly supplies are arriving on a regular basis. As to whether this is a harbinger of another major outflow -- 2100 people in a day is a lot. But at the same time, those leaving in the last few days say that there are only 20,000 civilians remaining in Grozny. It is always risky to try and predict what will happen and whether the people in the cellars, obviously in very dire conditions, will have the will, the ability or the health to get out.

Question: It is pretty obvious that Ingushetia, regardless of what UNHCR does, cannot take care of these people, since there are just too many in a very poor area. Is there any push by the United Nations with any of its tentacles to persuade Moscow to let them go elsewhere -– those who want to go and those who can? There are orphans and all sorts of people there who cannot be taken care of by anybody especially UNHCR because it is just not capable of doing everything.

Acting Deputy Spokesman: I do not know whether there is an effort being made to suggest that people who are now on the fringe of the combat zone and clearly in a refugee-like situation should be able to go somewhere else where they might be looked after better, but at the same time be further away from their homes. That is always a delicate balance and a concern for the refugee organization. But, we will ask UNHCR and see if there is advice they can provide on that.

Question: Is there any comment or reaction to The New York Times story today on the Iraq military build-up.

Acting Deputy Spokesman: Not from our side, no.

Question: The Secretary-General has been saying that it is up to the United States to negotiate with all the other Members of the United Nations on the question of reducing its contributions. This seems to mean that the prospects are dim. Is the Secretary-General intending to convey that the Secretariat will play no part in such a process?

Acting Deputy Spokesman: The first part of your assertion is obviously the case. The United States has passed legislation which puts various conditions on it paying part of the money its owes to the United Nations. Meeting some of those conditions is a matter which is outside the purview of the Secretariat, which is why it is expected that the United States Ambassador, Richard Holbrooke, will put some effort into persuading his fellow Member States to accept some of those conditions, including a reduction in the United States assessed contributions.

Now, as to the core of your question -- does this mean that the Secretary- General is shutting of any course of action in the future -- I think it would be a very unwise Secretary-General who ruled out or limited his options for future action. So I will be equivocal on the last point, but the first point is clearly the case: the burden of persuasion rests with the United States and Ambassador Holbrooke as the delegate here who will work with other Member States on matters which are very much in their domain rather than in the domain of the Secretary- General and the Secretariat.

Thank you very much.

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