DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
20000328The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.
**Secretary-General Appoints New Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq
Good afternoon. The Secretary-General today appointed Tun Myat of Myanmar as Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. Tun Myat has worked for the United Nations system for some 22 years and is currently an official of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome.
He succeeds Hans von Sponeck of Germany, who resigned as of the end of his current contract, which expires on 31 March.
We have a copy of Mr. Myat's resume, or c.v., in my Office.
**Security Council Hears Briefing on Democratic Republic of Congo
The Security Council met in closed consultations today to hear a briefing from the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Bernard Miyet, on his recent trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the wider Great Lakes region.
Mr. Miyet told the Council that all of the heads of State and senior officials whom he met during his visit pledged to adhere to the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement and to comply with Security Council resolutions.
However, he also noted several problems, including the outbreak of serious fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly in the Kasai Province. The parties, he said, are demonstrably not adhering to the ceasefire.
Mr. Miyet also warned of the need for freedom of movement of the expanded United Nations mission that is to be deployed in the coming months, but he added that the mission will continue to carry out logistical preparations for its wider deployment.
The Security Council has a busy agenda for tomorrow, when it will hear briefings from the Secretariat on Bougainville, Somalia and Guinea-Bissau. Guinea-Bissau will be discussed in an open briefing, while the other two subjects will be dealt with in closed consultations.
**Rwanda Document
You'll recall that when the National Post of Canada, in an article on 1 March, quoted from a so-called United Nations report concerning the shooting down of a plane in April 1994 that killed the Presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi, we declined to comment and referred inquiries to the Rwanda Tribunal.
The Tribunal searched its files for such a document and could find nothing. However, we -- the Secretariat -- did find, not a report, but a three-page internal memorandum, in the files of our Office for Internal Oversight Services here in New York.
That memo was drafted by Michael Hourigan, who had been an investigative team leader for the Tribunal Prosecutor's Office in Rwanda that was investigating the 1994 genocide in that country. He subsequently was engaged on a short-term contract with the Internal Oversight Services here in New York, at which time he drafted this internal memo.
The Secretariat has now transferred a copy of the memorandum to the Tribunal, which will determine whether or not to make it available to lawyers for clients facing prosecution.
**Notes from East Timor
Five hundred refugees sailed today from Kupang, in West Timor, bound for Dili, in East Timor, while yesterday, more than 500 refugees crossed the border from west to east.
To date, 156,200 refugees have returned to East Timor since repatriation began last October, organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
However, the Indonesian Government has announced it will cease assisting the return of refugees to East Timor at the end of this month. Officials from the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) are seeking a flexible arrangement on this issue given that there are still tens of thousands of refugees in West Timor who would like to return east.
The United Nations mission expects that when the rainy season ends, sometime next month, there could be a new influx of returnees.
So far, most returnees have been integrated in East Timor without too many problems, although isolated security incidents have given cause for concern.
On Saturday night in Dili, two suspected ex-militia members who had returned a month earlier were beaten up by a group of men. When a police officer tried to intervene, he too was beaten. This was the first assault of a police officer in East Timor.
**Human Trafficking in Bosnia and Philippines
The United Nations mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina announced today in Sarajevo that early this morning members of the United Nations International Police Task Force (IPTF) monitored a raid carried out by the local police last night in a night club, in an attempted crackdown on prostitution, as well as the harbouring of illegal aliens and possible trafficking in women. During the raid, five Romanian women were found hidden in a secret room. The IPTF officers are now interviewing those women to determine whether they were held against their will and were victims of human trafficking, which is a growing problem in Bosnia.
Also on human trafficking, a project to improve law enforcement against organized crime groups involved in new forms of slavery was jointly launched today in Vienna by the Government of the Philippines and the United Nations Centre for International Crime Prevention. This is the first pilot project launched by the crime prevention centre in its efforts to curb human trafficking. Similar projects are scheduled to begin this year in Eastern Europe, Western Africa and South America.
We have a press release on this subject in my Office.
**Chechnya
The UNHCR reports today that civilians continue to flee villages in southern Chechnya amid reports of widespread destruction of property and continuing military push by Russian troops. According to the UNHCR, the number of people fleeing Chechnya has remained steady at about 1,000 people per week.
**WFP Issues Appeals for African Food Aid
The World Food Programme (WFP) today issued two appeals for its programmes in Africa -- one for $5 million for thousands affected by the floods in Madagascar, and another for $16 million for a new food aid operation for the 350,000 people living in regroupment sites in Burundi.
We have press releases on both appeals.
**Weekly Update from Office of Iraq Programme
We also have the regular weekly update from the Office of the Iraq Programme -- that's available in my Office. It shows that last week Iraq exported 12.1 million barrels of oil for revenue of around $294 million and that a further two contracts for the sale of oil were approved. These were contracts, which had been pending for several weeks.
**Repatriation of Afghan Refugees
The first major repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan this year began yesterday. There are still more than 2.5 million Afghans in Pakistan and Iran, making them the world's single largest refugee group.
You can read about this in the UNHCR briefing note, as well as the weekly Afghan humanitarian update issued in Islamabad, both of which are available in my Office.
The weekly update also mentions that the first National Immunization Days in Afghanistan for the year 2000 will be held from 1 to 3 May, and then again from 3 to 5 June. Afghanistan is one of 14 countries where wild polio virus still exists. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) will appeal to all factions to observe days of tranquillity in order to reach all the children of Afghanistan.
**Sierra Leone Donor's Conference
The Sierra Leone donor conference ended last night in London. In a concluding statement, the Chair noted that "the participants had reaffirmed the international community's continuing and strong political support for the implementation of the July 1999 Lomé peace agreement, which is a precondition of sustainable development in Sierra Leone. They discussed funding requirements, including for disarmament and reconstruction programmes. Canada, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States and the European Commission, as well as Switzerland and the African Development Bank, have announced further support for Sierra Leone. The pledges amount to more than $158 million.
We have the text of the Chair's conclusion available in my Office.
**Ottunu-Bellamy Consultations on Children and Armed Conflict
The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Ottunu, and the Executive Director of UNICEF, Carol Bellamy, are to hold three days of consultations with leading non-governmental organizations from tomorrow, Wednesday, 29 March, through Friday, 31 March, on key issues affecting children in the context of armed conflict.
Participants at the meeting hope to contribute to preparations of a report by the Secretary-General -- that's due in July. The meeting is part of an international effort to ensure implementation of the Security Council resolution on armed conflict passed last August. In that resolution, the Council strongly condemned "the targeting of children in situations of armed conflict, including killing and maiming, sexual violence, abduction and forced displacement, recruitment and use of children in armed conflicts in violation of international law".
You can get the press release in my Office.
**UNCA Announcement
And finally, the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) asked me to tell you that Sergio Vento, the new Ambassador of Italy to the United Nations, will address members of your club, UNCA, tomorrow, Wednesday, at 4 p.m. and you're all invited. That will be in the UNCA Club.
Any questions?
**Questions and Answers
Question: On the National Post story on Rwanda, can you confirm, because there are various ways in which this has been referred to -- a report, a confidential document -- what is the status within the United Nations system of this memorandum? Is it right to refer to it as a United Nations report? Also, one of the agencies reports that this report smacked of disinformation? Do you have any comment on that?
Spokesman: No, I don't have a comment on that. But it is an internal, confidential memorandum. So one individual committed to paper his thoughts, as well as information conveyed to him. And that went into a file. It was done, though, in the Office of Internal Oversight Services which had nothing to do with the investigation of this plane crash. So that's why it got buried in a file.
Question: On Von Sponeck, is there any more you can tell us on his replacement, other than his name? Why did the Secretary-General choose him?
Spokesman: I've got a phone number for you. I called him just a few minutes before the briefing, and he'll be in the office for another hour or so. I said journalists would probably be calling him. He's happy to talk to you; I'll give you the number after the briefing if you want.
Question: Has he ever been in Iraq?
Spokesman: There isn't an indication from his c.v. that he has been. I did not ask him that, but you can when you speak to him.
Question: When will he go to Iraq?
Spokesman: The contract presumably would pick up on 1 April because his predecessor's contract expires 31 March. I assume he would have to come to New York for consultations here before he goes off to Iraq. There's no date been set for his trip to New York, but that's his assumption, as well as mine.
Question: In talking to the Secretary-General about this, perhaps if you did, was there any litmus test or question he had to answer such as his opinion on sanctions before going in there?
Spokesman: No, the Secretary-General did personally interview the final three candidates for the post, but that was a confidential process.
Question: Von Sponek, after seeing President Saddam Hussein, apparently gave a press conference. Do you have the text of that press conference?
Spokesman: We don't. I suppose we could try to get it for you. We'll make a phone call for you to see if we can get anything on it.
Question: Did the Secretary-General have a response to the election of Vladimir Putin, especially in connection with the efforts to get humanitarian agencies into Chechnya?
Spokesman: Not with that Chechnya connection that you just mentioned. But rather late last night for any of you who were still here just before we put the lid on about 7 p.m., we did put out a statement attributable to me. So you can pick that up in my Office -- reacting to the Russian elections.
Question: Other than the visit of Mary Robinson that's upcoming, is there any other progress on the peace talks that were going on in Moscow about UNHCR and other agencies getting access to Chechnya?
Spokesman: Yes, those talks were designed to create a framework for all humanitarian agencies to work in Chechnya. It's true that we haven't updated you on that. There was to have been a memorandum of understanding, which has note yet been concluded.
Question: Is there an official visit or time for the Secretary-General to meet President Castro on the day of the official visit to Cuba as opposed to the Group of 77 meeting?
Spokesman: We haven't put out the details of that programme. He'll have a day of official meetings in Havana and then two days of the South Summit, the Group of 77's first summit meeting. I'm assuming he'll meet President Castro, but I don't have the time. So we'll put those details out probably later this week. Question: In light of the Security Council visit to Washington on Thursday, what is the latest view of the Secretary-General of the benchmark dilemma regarding the request/demands/insistence of Senator Helms and the Committee in Congress on financial reforms here versus the reality of trying to run things here?
Spokesman: I think you heard Joseph Connor, the Under-Secretary-General for Management, who was at the briefing yesterday. The major hurdle, I think, that has to be overcome is the demand for the reduction in the U.S. assessment, both for peacekeeping, where Congress wants it reduced from 31 to 25 per cent, and for the regular budget, where they want an initial reduction from 25 to 22 per cent, followed later by a further reduction to 20 per cent. That, however, is the challenge that Ambassador Holbrooke faces in convincing the other Member States to pick up the points that the United States wants to give up. It's a zero-sum game, so if the United States wants to pay less, they will have to convince other Member States to pay more. Those discussions are already actively under way, to my knowledge.
Question: Yesterday, when Mr. Connor was here, you were talking about the Holy See contribution, and that question about a multiple of 10. In fact, it was $1,000 something. That's extremely low. Is that because they are an observer State? How is that justified?
Spokesman: Yes, as an observer, a non-member State, their contribution is less. As a small State, a micro State, it's the contributions committee that determines who pays how much. Those discussions are under way now to see if there should be a change in the criteria, but by the criteria, the Holy See pays just over a $1,000 a year.
Question: What would be the subject of discussion between the Secretary- General and the Pope?
Spokesman: I think I had that question earlier that there isn't usually an agenda worked out. It's whatever they decide to talk about, whatever is on their mind. It also might be a wider meeting, but I don't have the details yet, whether there would be other members of the Administrative Committee on Coordination also meeting with the Pope. I'm not clear on that. But when we get the precise details of the programme, I hope by the end of this week, we'll make them available to you and you'll see exactly what's happening with the Pope.
Thank you very much.
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