PRESS BRIEFING ON PEACE PROCESS FOR GREAT LAKES REGION

Press Briefing

BRIEFING ON PEACE PROCESS FOR GREAT LAKES REGION

At a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon it was said that since the signing of the 28 August Peace and Reconciliation Agreement in Arusha, which opened the initial phase of the peace process in Africa's Great Lakes Region, 19 of the negotiating parties had, along with the Government of Burundi, established a representative body that would be entrusted with implementing the Agreement. Berhanu Dinka, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the Great Lakes Region, told correspondents the Implementation Monitoring Committee had been launched on 27 November.

Further, following the request of the parties for the appointment of a United Nations representative to head that Committee, the Secretary-General had named Mr. Dinka to be its Chairman, a position he would hold simultaneously with his current assignment.

Mr. Dinka said that the Implementation Monitoring Committee had held its first organizational meeting in Arusha on 1 December. The members had discussed the committee's rules of procedure as well as revision of the calendar of implementation of the tenets of the Agreement. Mr. Dinka also noted that the committee would hold further discussions on those and other issues following a conference of donors, called for by French President Jacques Chirac and Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and scheduled to be held in Paris early next week. In the future, he said, the committee would continue to meet in Arusha until security conditions permitted the return and subsequent participation of exiled political leaders to Bujumbura. "We are trying to repatriate the process to Burundi as soon as it’s practical," Mr. Dinka added.

A correspondent asked if there were any women serving on the Implementation Monitoring Committee. Acknowledging the importance of that issue, Mr. Dinka noted that at the very beginning of the peace process, one of the first initiatives of the late President Julius Nyerere had been to try to build consensus among the negotiating parties, to ensure the participation of women. Before his death, Mr. Nyerere had been able to get the parties to approve the eventual participation of women from civil society organizations among six observers to the process. President Mandela, the current facilitator for the peace process, had continued to insist on women's participation as full members. While this had not been accomplished as yet, Mr. Dinka added, most of the parties to the Agreement did have women delegates among their number.

Joining Mr. Dinka at this afternoon's briefing was Jean Arnault, the Representative of the Secretary-General in Burundi. Mr. Arnault said that at the present time, one of the 19 political representatives was indeed a woman. He added that two of the six observers were women. He said that while the number of women participating in the Committee itself was not as large as had been hoped, all the parties would work to ensure broad participation by women's organizations. "Here," Mr. Arnault said, "the United Nations has a

Great Lakes Press Briefing - 2 - 7 December 2000

say and will certainly do what it takes to ensure that the large number of women's groups in Burundi participate in the peace process."

Mr. Dinka went on to say that while there had been no substantial or concrete objections to women participating in the Implementation Monitoring Committee, the original structure of the rules of procedure, which gave veto power to each member of the Committee, had made it difficult to appoint any new members. Achieving consensus on such issues had proved extremely difficult.

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