DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
20000308The following is a near verbatim-transcript of today's noon briefing by Marie Okabe, Associate Spokesman for the Secretary-General.
Good afternoon. Our guest at the briefing today is Carolyn McAskie, Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator. She will brief you first, then I will follow. [Ms. McAskie's briefing is issued separately.]
**Secretary-General to Visit United Kingdom and France
The Secretary-General will pay an official visit to the United Kingdom and France next week. He will leave for London on Sunday. On Monday, he will attend a multi-faith church service to mark Commonwealth Day. He will also meet later that day with Prime Minister Tony Blair.
On Tuesday, he will have meetings with Foreign Minister Robin Cook, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Peter Hain, and Secretary of State for Defence Geoffrey Hoon. He will also attend a luncheon hosted by Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short. In the evening, he will deliver the Commonwealth Lecture and attend the Commonwealth Dinner.
On Wednesday morning, he will go to Paris, where he will have lunch with the President of the National Assembly, Laurent Fabius, and dinner with Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine. On Thursday, he will lunch with President Jacques Chirac, followed by an afternoon meeting with Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
The Secretary-General will leave Paris for New York Thursday evening. We will have further details on the agenda once they have been finalized.
**Security Council Consultations
The Security Council began its closed consultations today with a briefing by the Assistant-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Hédi Annabi, on the situation in Sierra Leone.
Mr. Annabi said that the human rights situation in Sierra Leone remains a cause for serious concern, particularly in Port Loko, where looting, house burnings, harassment and abduction of civilians, rape and sexual abuse continue to be made. Former members of the Sierra Leone Army from the nearby Occra Hills have been blamed for the human rights violations, he said.
Reports of harassment, abduction and extortion were also made in areas controlled by the Revolutionary United Front, he added. However, Mr. Annabi said the human rights situation has generally improved in areas where the United Nations Mission has been deployed, and there has been a significant increase in the release of children held by the factions. We will have copies of Mr. Annabi's briefing available in the Spokesman's Office later today.
Also, we have a press release from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which notes that today it was able to deliver school books and other supplies to more than 15,000 Sierra Leonean children. That was the first time
Daily Press Briefing - 2 - 8 March 2000
in 18 months that outside assistance had reached Sierra Leone's northern region, UNICEF said.
The Council is also discussing the language of a draft presidential statement that will be issued at tomorrow's open debate on humanitarian action and the role of the Security Council. After consultations end, the President of the Council is also expected to read a statement to the press on the commemoration today of International Women's Day.
**United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone Destroys Ordnance
Today in Sierra Leone, the United Nations peacekeeping mission successfully completed a two-day operation to destroy unexploded ordnance in the Masiaka area, east of Freetown.
Yesterday, the Indian Engineering Company blew up 10 cluster bombs and one mortar bomb that had been found on the roadside. Earlier today, they destroyed a collection of 59 rocket-propelled grenades, mortar bombs and other ammunition. An inspection team has remained in the area to assess whether there are more bombs to destroy.
**East Timor
The United Nations mission in East Timor sent its Force Commander and political director to Jakarta today to meet with senior Indonesian government officials and impress on them the need to stop unlawful militia incursions into East Timor. In the latest security incident yesterday, a United Nations observation helicopter spotted three huts, which were burning in a village west of Atsave in the district of Ermera.
A group of 15 men, believed to be militia, carrying machetes and spears were seen leaving the scene. Shortly afterwards, more huts were burning in a nearby village, and the United Nations peacekeepers saw two men running away. The United Nations mission believes that the militia group that attacked three farmers in Atsave on 5 March and exchanged fire with United Nations troops the following day are still in the area. A briefing from Dili, East Timor, is available in the Spokesman's Office.
**Democratic Republic of Congo
Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Bernard Miyet is on his way to the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of a mission dispatched by the Secretary-General to explain in detail United Nations plans to deploy a military observer mission in that country. Mr. Miyet will seek the full support essential to deploy the more than 5,500-strong military observer mission.
As you recall, the Secretary-General was asked by the Security Council in paragraph 5 of resolution 1291, which authorized the expansion of that United Nations force, to assess if the deployment conditions exist or not.
Mr. Miyet is expected to arrive in Kinshasa tomorrow. He is expected to stay in the Democratic Republic of the Congo until 12 March, when he is scheduled to travel to Harare, Zimbabwe. From there, he will go to Kigali, Rwanda, and to Kampala, Uganda. He is also expected to go to Sierra Leone on 19 and 20 March. **International Women's Day
Women United for Peace -- that is the theme for today's International Women's Day.
In a town hall meeting this morning, the Secretary-General said, "women who know the price of conflict so well are also often better equipped than men to prevent or resolve it".
He added, "when society collapses, women play a critical role in ensuring that life goes on. When ethnic tensions cause or exacerbate conflict, women tend to build bridges rather than walls. Through education and tradition, from generation to generation, women have passed on the culture of peace".
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and the President of the Security Council, Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, also took the floor, and we have copies of their statements upstairs.
This afternoon, the Group on Equal Rights for Women in the United Nations is organizing a lunch in honour of the 10 women ambassadors (out of 188) to the United Nations. Following the luncheon, a dialogue on gender equality will be held, chaired by Louise Fréchette, the Deputy-Secretary-General.
Angela King, Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on Gender Issues, sent a special message to the women of Afghanistan in which she said, "I wish to share with you my admiration for the women of Afghanistan ... ."
"You are not forgotten", she added. We have copies of her message available upstairs.
**Security Council Members to Decide on Proposal for Composition of UNMOVIK College of Commissioners
The Security Council members received a proposal from the United Nations Secretariat yesterday concerning the composition of a college of commissioners for the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIK). They have until the close of business on Thursday, 9 March, to respond to the proposal.
The Security Council, in its resolution 1284 of 17 December 1999, requested the Secretary-General to appoint suitably qualified experts as a college of commissioners in consultation with the Executive Chairman of UNMOVIK and members of the Security Council.
**Iraq Oil-for-Food Update
Since the United Nations began implementing the accelerated procedures for the approval of humanitarian contracts for Iraq on 1 March, 30 humanitarian contracts for Phases VI and VII worth $233.5 million were approved. Last week, Iraq exported a total of 12.1 million barrels of crude oil with an estimated value of $330 million. This brings total oil exports in Phase VII to 145.1 million barrels with a value of around $3.6 billion. A more detailed weekly update is available in the Spokesman's Office.
**International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda announced today in Arusha that Jean De Dieu Kamahunda, a Rwandan genocide suspect arrested in France last November, has been transferred to the Tribunal in Arusha yesterday. A press release from the Tribunal is available in the Spokesman's Office.
**Treaties
It is a busy day for treaty signings, starting with the signing by Greece of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism at 10 a.m. today. Greece becomes the fifteenth signatory to the treaty, which will need to be ratified by 22 countries before it can enter into force.
Also today, the Republic of Korea became the ninety-fifth country to sign the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court. That treaty will enter into force once 60 countries have ratified it. So far, seven countries have ratified it.
Finally, the Republic of Moldova signed a protocol on water and health to the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes.
**Kosovo
We have the latest briefing notes from the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, which provide some details on the incident in Mitrovica yesterday. In that incident, a brawl between a Serb and an Albanian escalated into two hours of violence that left 22 Kosovars and at least 15 Kosovo Force (KFOR) soldiers injured. The situation has calmed down today, the Mission reports.
**New Background Information on Peacekeeping Operations
We have a new edition of the Department of Public Information (DPI) background note on United Nations peacekeeping operations prepared in consultation with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. It provides some basic facts and figures on all 16 current United Nations operations as of 1 March 2000. The note includes information on the duration of each mission, military and civilian strength, as well as on the financial aspects.
**Updates on Situation in Afghanistan and Chechnya
The latest weekly update for Afghanistan is available upstairs, as well as the latest update on the North Caucasus from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We also have releases from the International Labour Organization (ILO) on immigrant workers and their families facing discrimination in Western Europe, and from the World Health Organization (WHO) on the minimal economic effect of tobacco regulation.
**Payments
We have received four more payments to the United Nations regular budget for this year. Yesterday, we received three payments from Namibia, Palau and Slovenia, who have become the sixty-fifth, sixty-sixth and sixty-seventh Member
States to be paid in full for the 2000 regular budget. Today, we received a payment from Jordan, which becomes the sixty-eighth Member State to be paid in full.
Namibia made a payment of just over $73,000, Palau around $10,500, Slovenia just over $640,000, and Jordan just over $63,000.
**Questions and Answers
Question: When will the report of the Sanctions Committee on Angola be released?
Associate Spokesman: I will check on that date for you. [Later, the Office of the Spokesman announced that the report will be issued on Wednesday, 15 March.]
Question: How many child soldiers in Sierra Leone have been released to the United Nations and how many are left?
Associate Spokesman: I do not have the exact figures. We have been reporting to you steadily that there have been groups of children released. This point was obviously noted by Hédi Annabi in the Council meeting. The briefing would most likely give a more up-to-date figure or the exact figure. If not, we would get that for you.
[The Spokesman's Office later said that 293 child soldiers had been released since the beginning of 2000 and 801 during last year. The UNICEF had said that about a half of the missing children in Sierra Leone are documented cases of abduction.]
Question: What is the status of the report of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on the shooting down of the planes coming out of Angola?
Associate Spokesman: I will let you know if it will be made available. [The Spokesman's Office later stated that the reports on the two United Nations plane crashes in Angola were completed, but, because they were internal reports, they had not been made public.]
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