DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

The following is a near verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Manoel de Almeida e Silva, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

**Statement Attributable to the Spokesman on Sudan

"The Secretary-General is pleased to announce that tomorrow, 16 August, the United Nations will resume all humanitarian relief flights throughout the Sudan. He welcomes the assurances that he received from the President of the Republic of the Sudan that all measures are being taken to ensure the safety of Operation Lifeline Sudan relief personnel and aircraft.

"The Secretary-General trusts that the Government of the Sudan and other parties of the conflict will continue to honour fully their commitment to ensure the safety and security of relief workers and also the vulnerable populations whose urgent needs humanitarian personnel are trying to address throughout the country."

**Democratic Republic of Congo

You will recall that in its Presidential statement of 2 June, the Security Council requested the Secretary-General to establish an expert panel to deal with its illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Secretary-General has appointed the Chairperson and four members of that panel.

He has named Madame Safiatou Ba-N'Daw of the Ivory Coast, a former Minister of Energy and former senior World Bank official as the Chairperson of the Panel. The four panel members will be François Ekoko of Cameroon, Moustapha Tall of Senegal, Henri Maire of Switzerland and Mel Holt of the United States. The panel is to convene in New York for an initial briefing, but its base of operations after that will be Nairobi.

They are to submit, through the Secretary-General, a preliminary report to the Security Council within three months containing its initial findings and a final report with recommendations once its work is completed. An exchange of letters between the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council will be out on the racks shortly. It is already available on our Web site.

We will also have information on Ms. Ba-N'Daw, the Chairperson of the panel and we hope to have a bio note for you later this afternoon.

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**Security Council

This morning, the Security Council began its open meeting on Bosnia and Herzegovina with a briefing by Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Bernard Miyet, who noted the progress made by the United Nations Mission in that country on police restructuring.

The United Nations Mission, he said, had stepped up efforts to ensure adequate minority representation in the Bosnian police forces by recruiting minority cadets for police academies and redeploying minority officers between Bosnia's entities. So far, nearly 450 minority graduates are currently attending or have graduated Bosnia's police academies, while 130 minority officers have been identified for redeployment across the lines of the entities.

Among those redeployed officers, by the way, is a Bosniac police officer who joined the police force in Srebrenica this week; other Bosniac officers may also be assigned to Srebrenica in the near future.

Miyet also told the Council that minority return movements are progressing across Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the past six months, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) registered more than 19,500 minority returns in Bosnia and Herzegovina compared to just over 2,000 returns registered during the same period last year.

Copies of Mr. Miyet's talking points available in the Spokesman's Office. Tomorrow, the Council expects to hold consultations on Somalia.

**Afghanistan

In other Security Council news, action by the Council's Sanctions Committee on Afghanistan has cleared Ariana airlines, which operates in Taliban-controlled areas, to fly sick and injured children tomorrow to Dusseldorf, Germany, for medical help.

The Sanctions Committee decided last Friday afternoon to grant an exemption from the sanctions regime imposed against the Taliban last year -- which includes restrictions on most flights by Ariana airlines - - to allow the flight from Kabul to Dusseldorf. On the way, the plane will also pick up sick children in Tajikistan, Armenia and Georgia.

The plane will then leave Dusseldorf on 19 August and will arrive in Kabul the following day.

**Kosovo

The Secretary-General's Special Representative for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, today briefed the Interim Administrative Council on the actions taken yesterday by the United Nations Mission and the

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 15 August 2000

Kosovo Force (KFOR) to take responsibility for the Zvecan smelter. The plant had been linked to atmospheric lead levels in northern Mitrovica that were 200 times the levels recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Three KFOR soldiers were reported lightly injured when a group of Serbs resisted the effort by the United Nations Mission to take control of the plant. There was also a small demonstration reported at Zvecan this morning. Kouchner said that the Mission hoped to repair the smelter as soon as possible, to make it environmentally acceptable. He noted that yesterday, some 20 workers at the smelter agreed to take blood tests. By today, some 100 workers at the plant had received advance compensation for the month of August, while the United Nations Mission works to improve the plant's environmental standards.

Further details about the Interim Administrative Council's meeting are available upstairs in a press release from Pristina.

**Sierra Leone

The human rights officers of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone travelled to the town of Bo and its vicinity where they confirmed reports of harassment by the Civilian Defence Force (Komajors) of civilian population suspected of having belonged to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) or merely sympathetic to them. Human Rights officers are scheduled to meet with the Civilian Defence Force leadership later this week in an effort to put a stop to this type of behaviour.

Also, on Sierra Leone, four MI24 attack helicopters provided by the Government of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone are now operational.

**Iraq

The head of the Iraq Programme, Benon Sevan gave a press conference in Baghdad a short time ago at the end of his 16-day visit to that country. In his comments, Mr. Sevan acknowledged shortcomings of the oil-for-food programme and Iraq's urgent need for trucks and other transport to cope with the supplies, which are arriving in increasing quantities and the impact of holds.

In the weekly update available upstairs today, you will see that the total value of holds is currently $1.74 billion.

Iraq's oil exports last week were 14.2 million barrels for revenue estimated around $348 million. This brings the total revenue in the current phase to around $2.9 billion. Phase eight began on 9 June.

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**Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Discusses Roma

In Geneva today, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination heard a discussion this morning on the protection of the Roma, a group of people who number over 15 million and are dispersed across the world. This follows a discussion held last night by the Sub- commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights where minority rights and the Roma were raised. The Committee will continue to discuss the Roma today and tomorrow.

A note from the Geneva office contains more details.

**Angola

Today's briefing notes from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) indicates that the departures of refugees from Angola into neighbouring countries continues to intensify, with Zambia receiving between 500 and 1,000 Angolans each month for the past four months. Last week, UNHCR says, 288 Angolans -- mostly women and children in poor condition -- crossed into Zambia's North Western Province. Some of them only wore T-shirts, and had eaten only the wild fruit that they could find during their journey. There are an estimated 22,000 Angolan refugees currently in Zambia.

Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have also recorded large numbers of Angolans arriving from across the border. More than 6,000 Angolans have fled into northern Namibia since last November, while three neighbouring provinces in the DRC host a total of some 102,000 Angolans.

Further details are available in today's briefing notes, which also include information on their operations in Colombia and West Timor.

**United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Aid for Iran

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced in Tehran today that they will be providing $75,000 to combat the effects of the devastating drought, the worst to have hit the region in 30 years. The money will be used to provide safe drinking water in the worst hit areas of the country. Recently, a United Nations assessment team reported that more than 50 per cent of Iran’s population had been effected by the drought.

The full press release is available in the Office upstairs.

**Treaties

This morning, the Permanent Representative of Turkey, Ambassador Volkan Vural, signed the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

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With these signings by Turkey, there are now 62 signatories and 142 Parties to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and 61 signatories and 144 Parties to the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

**Questions and Answers

Question: Did the Sanctions Committee authorize only one flight from Afghanistan?

Deputy Spokesman: Yes, they did.

Question: Does the Secretary-General have any reaction to reports of a breakdown in DRC negotiations?

Deputy Spokesman: We do not yet have any direct reports on what happened in Lusaka. We did see -- as you did -- wire reports on what apparently went on there. Of course, if there was a breakdown in the talks, we regret that. However, we do not have first-hand reports as yet.

I did notice in the media reports that there was agreement by all Heads of State, except for one, on the deployment of the United Nations Observer Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) and on the role of former President Masire of Botswana to continue facilitating the process of intra-Congolese dialogue.

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