PRESS BRIEFING BY HEAD OF STANDBY ARRANGEMENTS UNIT

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY HEAD OF STANDBY ARRANGEMENTS UNIT

The United Nations Standby Arrangements system was a valuable step towards establishing a rapid deployment capacity for the Organization, Commander Erkki Platan of the Standby Arrangements Unit told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon. He was introducing the annual report on the Unit's activities in 1999.

Commander Platan, Planning Officer and Head of the Standby Arrangements Unit in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, said that the weakness of the Standby Arrangements system was that the final decision on deployment remained in the hands of the Member States contributing troops, equipment and other resources. It was therefore impossible to know whether those resources would actually be available when needed.

During 1999, he said, six new Member States had joined the Standby Arrangements system and 10 others had signed Memorandums of Understanding. One Member State had joined the system at the beginning of this year and another had signed a Memorandum of Understanding.

The system now had a total of 147,500 troops, he said. However, those personnel exceeded the numbers actually needed because the bulk of them were infantry units. The Standby Arrangements system required support units, including logistics, strategic lift capacity as well as sea, air and ground transport. Civilian police officers were especially needed.

Commander Platan said his Unit was using the Multinational Standby Forces High Readiness Brigade (SHIRBRIG), a Danish initiative, as a model for the creation of brigade-size subregional systems. The brigade had 10 member countries and two observer countries. The core of its standing brigade staff comprised 13 officers headed by a Dutch brigadier-general. The SHIRBRIG, with 5,000 troops and a small planning element in Copenhagen, was available and ready for deployment should the Secretary-General request it.

He said there had been efforts to create similar subregional systems, such as the Central Asian Peacekeeping Battalion grouping of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and the Baltic Peacekeeping Battalion formed by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) were in the process of creating their own peacekeeping brigade.

Asked by a correspondent how many forces were ready for deployment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Commander Platan reiterated that the final decision was always up to the contributing countries. The forces were available in the Standby Arrangements Unit's electronic database, but it was up to the contributing countries to make them available.

In response to another question, he said that although the Standby Arrangements system had managed to reduce deployment times by 60 per cent to 30 days, it could still take three to four months to put troops on the ground. The

Platan Briefing - 2 - 14 March 2000

system had no strategic lift capacity and was forced to rely on slower commercial transportation. Sea transportation was especially time-consuming. Only the United States had strategic lift capacity.

Another journalist asked what was being done to eliminate incompatibility between troops from a given country supported by units from a different country.

Commander Platan replied that there was no opportunity for troops from different environments to train together before deployment. Every new mission had to be planned on an ad hoc basis from the beginning. It was hoped that in the future, regional and subregional standby systems would allow troops to know each other and train together before deployment.

Responding to another question, he told the same journalist that the Standby Arrangements system's forces had been used 14 times in different peacekeeping operations.

Asked by another correspondent how many countries had pledged forces, he said there were 88 countries in the system. Of those, 23 had expressed political willingness to join the Standby Arrangements but had not provided any list of capabilities. The remaining 65 countries had provided whatever resources were available to the system. Thirty-two countries had signed memorandums of understanding, the latest one being Benin on 31 January this year.

Commander Platan told another journalist that China had not signed a memorandum of understanding. It was a member of the Standby Arrangements system without any list of capabilities. Its participation in the system involved civilian specialists.

* *** *