DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
20000306The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General:
Good afternoon. Our guest at the briefing today will be Dennis McNamara who is the Deputy Special Representative for Humanitarian Affairs in Kosovo.
**Security Council Consultations
The Security Council this morning began a private meeting in which it was briefed by Bernard Kouchner, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Kosovo, as well as by General Klaus Reinhardt, Commander of the Kosovo Force (KFOR).
In the private meeting format, other Member States that do not sit on the Council may be invited to attend and hear the briefing, and a record is kept of the proceedings. However, the non-Council delegations may not speak at the meeting, which is also closed to the press and public.
In today's meeting, Mr. Kouchner presented the latest report of the Secretary-General on Kosovo, which is out on the racks today. In it, the Secretary-General says that the level of violence in Kosovo, especially against minorities, remains unacceptable and he warns there was a serious deterioration in the security situation in early February.
The Secretary-General appealed to Member States to provide the United Nations Mission with more police officers, special police units, international judges and prosecutors, and penal experts. As of March 1, there were 2,361 United Nations police serving on Kosovo, with three special police units expected to arrive there this month.
He emphasized the need to design and finance programmes for longer-term reconstruction and rehabilitation, as well as the revitalization of Kosovo's economy.
General Klaus Reinhardt commented that KFOR does its utmost to make Kosovo a safe place. My soldiers conducted between 500 and 750 patrols every day, he said. We also guard over 550 key sites and daily operate over 200 vehicle checkpoints. On any given day, two out of three of my soldiers are out conducting security operations.
Mr. Kouchner and General Reinhardt will hold a press conference at a time to be announced later.
**Mozambique
Steady progress is being reported on the assistance front in Mozambique. The level of all rivers continues to fall. Cyclone Gloria has dropped in intensity, but the weather forecast foresees heavy rains in southern Mozambique tomorrow and Wednesday, according to the latest situation report from the field.
Daily Press Briefing - 2 - 6 March 2000
Plans are being made to reopen the road to Maputo, the capital, to the coastal city of Macia, about 150 kilometres northeast. The opening of the road would facilitate delivery of much needed food and other emergency items. An estimated 950,000 people have been affected by the flooding, including 250,000 who have been displaced from their homes. It appears rescue operations by air are in the process of being completed. So far, more than 10,000 people have been rescued.
The major thrust now is the supply, by air and water, of food and equipment for ensuring clean drinking water, as well as the movement of personnel and supplies to address health needs. One hundred tons of aid is being distributed daily. Shelter is also a priority. Those needs were also among the priorities outlined by the meeting of ministers from Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa held last Friday in Pretoria.
Forty-three helicopters and 120 inflatable boats are involved in the aid operation. Two coordination centres, one in Maputo and the other in Beira in central Mozambique, have been set up. United Nations officials report excellent cooperation with military personnel that are in place from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Malawi, and from South Africa, which played a critical role in the early phase of the emergency.
Contributions, or at least pledges, now stand at $78 million.
**East Timor
In a serious security incident reported in a village east of Maliana yesterday, one East Timorese was reportedly killed and another wounded, and a third man kidnapped, allegedly by five militiamen armed with automatic rifles and grenades. The kidnapped man escaped and reported the incident to United Nations civilian police in Maliana. The United Nations mission is investigating the incident.
Meanwhile, the family reunions resumed last Saturday in Batugade, five kilometres from the border with West Timor. Two thousand people from East Timor and 260 from West Timor got together. These were much smaller numbers compared to those at the last gathering of two weeks ago. The United Nations Mission in East Timor attributes one of the reasons for this low turnout to the misinformation campaign conducted by pro-autonomy leaders. One of the leaflets they were distributing, prior to the latest family gathering, was issued by the United Timorese Heroes, a name similar to our mission -- its acronym is UNTAS,the acronym of the United Nations mission is UNTAET (United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor.
The United Nations mission has reiterated its previous call to Indonesia authorities to persuade the pro-autonomy leaders to abandon antagonism and confrontation and opt for democratic cooperation.
The Assistant United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Soren Jessen-Petersen, who was visiting East Timor over the weekend, is in West Timor today and UNHCR estimates that there still could be up to 100,000 East Timorese refugees in West Timor and that 50,000 or more might wish to go back home if they had a free choice. About 150,000 refugees have returned to East Timor, so far.
We have a briefing note from Dili in my office. **Rwanda
Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), today expressed outrage at the killing of a United Nations volunteer working for her agency in Rwanda. The aid worker, Samuel Sargbah, a Liberian national, was shot dead on Saturday at around 9 p.m. by an unknown assailant while sitting in his car in the Rwandan capital after visiting a friend. An investigation is under way.
The death brings to three the number of WFP workers killed in Rwanda in three years.
**Afghanistan
Representatives of the warring factions in Afghanistan are expected to begin several days of peace talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday. The Secretary-General's Personal Representative for Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, will attend the talks as an observer.
The talks are being hosted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is currently chaired by Iran. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Mr. Vendrell will meet with delegations from the Taliban and the Northern Alliance separately; there are currently no plans for face-to-face talks between the parties.
The talks are expected to last no more than three days.
**International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Welcomes Arrest
We have a in my office in which the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia welcomes the detention of Dragoljub Prcac by SFOR yesterday. He was one of the original eight individuals charged in an indictment on 2 June 1998 for crimes committed at the Omarska prison camp in northwestern Bosnia between May and August 1992.
**Human Rights Experts Call for Investigation of Alleged Abuses against Women in Chechnya
Four experts of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have called on the Russian Federation to investigate allegations of arbitrary detention, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, torture and violence against women in Chechnya.
We have a from Geneva providing more details on that.
**Arlacchi Statement to Commission on Narcotic Drugs
We also have available in my office the opening statement of Pino Arlacchi, Executive Director of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, to the forty-third session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs that opened today in Vienna.
**Payments
Cuba and Saint Lucia became the sixty-third and sixty-fourth Member States to be paid in full for the regular budget for 2000.
Cuba made a payment of just over $250,000 and Saint Lucia, the minimum, of just over $10,000.
[To access the full list of Payments to the UN Regular Budget click .]
**Press Conferences for Tomorrow
At 10 a.m., Vladislav Jovanovic, Chargé d'affaires of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, will hold a press conference to discuss the situation in Kosovo and the implementation of Security Council resolution 1244.
At 11 a.m., the Secretary-General will give his first press conference for the year.
**Question and Answer
Question: What warnings did the United Nations send about the Mozambique flood and what efforts did it make to assist the 1 million victims?
Spokesman: The system that is set up through the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, through an office that it maintains in Geneva, which has an early warning system. In this case, the United Nations sent out an alarm and, I think, the response might have been complicated by the two-phase crisis in Mozambique. There were initially heavy rains causing some flooding without indications that this was going to be a major crisis. Then, there was a cyclone, which turned the flooding into a major crisis.
The rest is just the response. We moved some things from a warehouse in Pisa. We talked to the South Africans about coordinating among all the governments concerned to say what they needed so that we didn't rush in with a lot of useless material, but it is still hard to respond on a dime to a crisis so big that it affects a million people.
Question: During his mission to East Timor, did the Secretary-General manage to obtain an agreement with the Indonesian authorities about the refugees in West Timor? How many people are still in the camps?
Spokesman: He raised this matter repeatedly, starting with President Wahid and extending to his meeting with the Minister who is responsible for refugees and displaced populations. Both the Indonesian Government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimate that there might be about 50,000 to 60,000 people in West Timor who may not want to return.
The latest figure from the United Nations is that there are about 50,000 people who would want to return. We estimate that of the 100,000 refugees there, about half would like to stay or be resettled somewhere else in Indonesia and a half would like to return home. Our concern is over the
impediments being put in the way of those who want to return home, including the propaganda that scares them concerning conditions in East Timor.
Question: What is the reaction of the Organization to the cancellation of the elections in Haiti?
Spokesman: The Secretary-General has noted, with concern, the announcement by the Haitian authorities last Friday that the legislative and local elections would be delayed beyond the previous scheduled date of 19 March. We also note that no new date has been set for the elections. He emphasizes the importance of prompt, free and fair legislative and local elections for the restoration of Haiti's Parliament and for strengthening Haiti's democracy.
You will recall that, on Friday, the Security Council issued a statement to the press, emphasizing the importance of remaining close to the electoral calendar.
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