DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
20000202The following is near-verbatim press transcript of today's noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, the Spokesman for the Secretary-General:
** Briefings
Good Afternoon. It is a pleasure for me to welcome to the briefing an old friend, Sven Fredriksen, who is the United Nations Police Commissioner in Kosovo, who will give you an update on police matters in that territory right after this briefing.
** Kosovo
We just got word that at around 4 p.m. in Kosovo, a bus clearly marked UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and carrying 49 passengers, was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. According to initial reports from the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees in Pristina, two passengers were killed and five others wounded. The bus, operated by the Danish Refugee Council as part of eight so-called freedom of movement lines, carried passengers on a routine Wednesday run. The incident occurred three kilometres south of a place called Gornji Klina on the route between the town of Banja northwest of Pec and southern Mitrovica. The bus was escorted by Danish armoured personnel vehicles. The UNHCR spokesman in Pristina, Peter Kessler, described the incident as grave and said it was the first time that the bus lines, which are aimed at facilitating transportation among mixed local populations and operating in the region since October, had come under such an attack.
** Security Council
The Security Council will meet this afternoon for closed consultations on its Programme of Work for February. Tomorrow morning the Council will take up the matter of East Timor, with the Transitional Administrator for East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, introducing the Secretary-General's report on the United Nations operation there. This will happen in an open meeting. Mr. Vieira de Mello will take questions at the stake-out microphone immediately following the Council meeting at about 1:15 p.m.
** East Timor
In Passabe, in East Timor's Oecussi enclave, a team of forensic experts have so far exhumed 15 bodies and also found the incomplete remains of five others. There are 20 gravesites marked for excavation and it is believed that the location contains 50 to 60 bodies. As we have reported, the gravesites were found in December 1999, but due to the problems of access and the rainy season, the forensic experts could only begin work this week. Two forensic experts from Australia are working with a team of about 20 individuals comprising
Daily Press Briefing - 2 - 2 February 2000
investigators from the United Nations Civilian Police, the International Military Force (INTERFET), human rights non-governmental organizations and East Timorese. If the excavation continues at the current pace, we expect that work at Passabe could be completed by next Monday when the bodies would then be brought to the new morgue.
** Sierra Leone
Yesterday, one of the Military Observer teams in Sierra Leone secured the release of 37 children ex-combatants, from ages 6 to 12. Among them was one girl. They had been held in the rebel stronghold of Occra Hills, about 70 kilometres from Freetown. Some of the younger children appeared to be malnourished. They were taken to Freetown and handed over to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). This is the second release negotiated by the military observers this year. On 22 January, 29 children had been released from the same location.
UNICEF estimates that about 5,000 children, some of them as young as 5 years old, have been involved in the conflict in Sierra Leone. Fifty-five per cent of the reported 4,000 missing children are documented cases of abduction. In 1999, only 801 children were released by rebel forces to UNICEF.
** Rwanda
The Belgian authorities arrested Rwandan genocide suspect Justin Ndindiliyimana, the former Commander of the Gendarmerie Nationale or Military Police. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda confirmed that his indictment for genocide was made public last Friday. He was arrested on Saturday. No arrangements have yet been made for his transfer to Arusha, Tanzania.
** Secretary-General
At 3 p.m. today, the Secretary-General will address the Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, which began its current session on Monday and wraps up today. The Board meets regularly to advise the Secretary-General on a wide range of arms limitation and disarmament issues.
We have made copies of the Secretary-General's address available to you. In them, he says that it is "disheartening" that nuclear-weapon States have maintained policies and doctrines based on reliance on nuclear weapons "for the foreseeable future".
He also voices concern at the possibility that future deployment of ballistic missile defences could threaten the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and he urges greater urgency and flexibility by the Conference on Disarmament in its work The Secretary-General's speech will be televised, but the rest of the meeting will be closed.
The Advisory Board, chaired by Miguel Marín Bosch of Mexico, has 20 members, as well as one ex officio member. We have a list of their names in my office.
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** Internally Displaced Persons
The United Nations has produced two publications aimed at providing guidance to staff from United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations and other groups working with internally displaced persons in field operations.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has provided us with limited copies for distribution to you.
One is called the Handbook for Applying the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which spells out the meaning of the principles in non-technical language. The guiding principles were introduced in 1998 by Francis M. Deng, the Representative of the Secretary-General on internally displaced persons. It mentions for example that the guiding principles clearly state that the primary duty and responsibility for providing humanitarian assistance lies with national authorities and that this same obligation adheres to insurgent groups with regard to civilian populations under their control.
The second publication is the Manual on Field Practice in Internal Displacement, which compiles over 60 examples of field programme initiatives. Both booklets are being distributed to field staff working in United Nations humanitarian agencies as well as to non-governmental organizations.
** Budget Information
Today, we received a payment from the Netherlands, which becomes the forty-fourth Member State to pay its regular budget dues in full for this year. The Netherlands made a payment of approximately $17.2 million.
There was some understandable confusion about the budget situation following yesterday's briefing. We had four countries on the Honour Roll for paying their contributions to the regular budget who were well behind in paying their other assessed contributions, namely to the peacekeeping budget and for the International Tribunals. We are grateful to you for pointing out this inconsistency and we accept that an honour roll should be a real honour roll covering only countries which are up to date in their legally binding assessments. So we are putting together a new honour roll based on these criteria.
** Press Releases
Among the press releases available in my office today, the United Nations Information Service in Vienna today issued a release on the conclusion of Ad Hoc Committee on transnational crime, which ended its meeting by calling for a new United Nations Convention against Corruption.
Also today, we have the weekly humanitarian update for Afghanistan. It notes that the outbreak of a disease in the district of Darra Souf, which has killed at least 50 people, has been identified by local doctors as measles. The UNICEF is sending antibiotics and vitamins to the district by truck and donkey from Kabul.
Daily Press Briefing - 4 - 2 February 2000
And, finally, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has issued a press release noting that the Tribunal's Appeals Chamber has ordered the withdrawal of the counsel for one suspect, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, and declared that he is to be represented by new counsel at his next hearing.
There is a press conference at 11 a.m. tomorrow -- Judge Claude Jorda, President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
That is all I have for you. Is there anything before we go to Commissioner Fredriksen?
** Questions and Answers
Question: Is Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the World Food Programme, still at Headquarters?
Spokesman She was at the weekly Cabinet meeting this morning. I saw her there. I do not know for how much longer she will be in New York.
Question: And she has no plans to speak to the press?
Spokesman: To come and talk to you? We can ask her if you are interested. There is only one you? I see others nodding. Well, we can see if we can arrange for her to brief you before she leaves.
Question: Can any statement or some detailed briefing come out of the Advisory Disarmament Board?
Spokesman: The Board exists to advise the Secretary-General. I do not know whether in that capacity they feel comfortable making statements to the press. The meeting itself is closed as we mentioned. But we will ask them if there is anyone that they would designate to talk to you about this session. Maybe even Jayantha Dhanapala, the Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs.
Question: On the issue of the outstanding dues: what efforts are being made to get those countries with outstanding contributions to pay up and how outstanding are their debts?
Spokesman: I am not sure I understand the question. We are constantly pressuring Member States to pay up. For years now we have been in this briefing mentioning who pays. We have put out this honour roll on who has had paid up in full for the regular budget. We give it as much publicity as we can. And the Charter has the loss of vote penalty in the General Assembly for a government that falls two years behind. We also publicize the governments who are on that list. But I do not know if there is much else we can do.
Question: In light of yesterday's announcement have they indicated that they will come through with some money? Have you gotten any feedback from them?
Spokesman: Which category of States are you talking about?
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Question: The ones that are outstanding debtors and losing their vote.
Spokesman: The ones who are losing their vote? There is something of a pattern where immediately after the assessments for a given year fall overdue, that would be somewhere after 30 January, a number of governments that are on the line -- the loss of vote penalty line -- fall over to the wrong side and lose their vote. Because the plenary session of the General Assembly is now over, they do not feel any compelling reason to get paid up right away. If there were to be a special session of the Assembly in the spring you would see a flurry of payments by a number of these governments -- just enough to get their vote back. And then when the next plenary starts in the fall, there is another rush of payments to get their votes back. There are always a small number who never get their votes back.
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