United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-06-19

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Friday, 19 June, 1998

HEADLINES

• Security Council approves purchase of oil production equipment allowing Iraq to produce more oil.
• Secretary-General says he will withdraw troops from Angola if there is no political will to complete peace process.
• Flow of refugees from Kosovo to northern Albania has stopped, according to United Nations refugee agency.
• 5,000 Angolans arrive in Congo-Kinshasa following fighting between UNITA and government forces.
• Refugee agency says that foreign nationals from Guinea Bissau continue to arrive in Senegal and Cape Verde.
• Top UN official says fighting and human rights abuses in Sierra Leone are causing dramatic new refugee emergency.
• Secretary-General says there have been signs of increasing military activity in Cyprus.
• UN legal Counsel tells Rome conference that international criminal court should judge attacks on UN personnel.
• Secretary-General urges parties to continue to cooperate in identification process for Western Sahara referendum.
• UNESCO Director-General condemns upsurge in violence against journalists.

Unanimously adopting resolution 1175, the Council noted that, under existing circumstances, Iraq is unable to export enough petroleum to produce the $5.26 billion worth of oil it is permitted to sell under the oil-for-food programme. The programme allows Iraq to sell this limited amount of oil to pay for such goods as food and medical supplies.

In February, the Council adopted resolution 1153, increasing the amount of oil Iraq can sell every six months from $2.1 billion to $5.26 billion. But Iraq claimed that after providing for spare parts and repairs, it could not guarantee its capacity to produce enough oil to realize that amount. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended that the Council authorize the export of necessary equipment to Iraq so it could increase production.

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, the Council asked the Committee, established under resolution 661 (1990), to approve contracts for the oil- producing equipment needed for each individual project. It also decided that up to $300 million of the escrow account may be used to meet any expenses determined by the Committee related to the export of such equipment.

Expenses directly related to oil exports may be financed by letters of credit drawn against future oil sales and the proceeds are to be deposited in the escrow account. The distribution plan approved by the Secretary- General on 29 May, or any new plan agreed to by him and Iraq, will remain in effect for each subsequent periodic renewal of the oil- for-food programme.

The Council also asked the Secretary-General to provide for the monitoring of the parts and equipment inside Iraq.

Meanwhile, a United Nations spokesman said that the Executive Director of the United Nations Iraq Programme, Benon Savon, was leaving for Baghdad Friday night. He planned to stay two weeks to discuss with Iraqi officials their oil production capacity.

In his latest report on the United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA), the Secretary-General says that the situation in the country has continued to deteriorate quickly and has become critical.

According to Mr. Annan, this deterioration is attributable, for the most part, to the failure of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to fulfil its obligations under the Lusaka Protocol. He says that UNITA has also failed to implement "the well- balanced" plan offered by his Special Representative Alioune Blondin Beye to the parties on 15 May.

The Secretary-General says that if the peace process in Angola is not completed expeditiously, he would also stop the deployment of the additional police observers whose presence was to enhance confidence between the parties and to consolidate MONUA's deployment. "It would also become necessary in such a situation to review the United Nations involvement in Angola."

Mr. Kofi Annan has strongly appealed to UNITA to cooperate with the United Nations in the immediate extension of State administration throughout the Angolan territory and, in particular, to the four strategic locations of Andulo, Bailundo, Mungo and N'Harea.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday that it was not clear why the flow has stopped. One possible explanation is that the Serbian security forces have sealed the border with Kosovo.

The agency added that it was hard to assess the number of displaced people in Kosovo who lost their homes and may be stuck in the mountains. UNHCR said these displaced people were unable to return to their homes and at the same time afraid to cross over to Albania.

UNHCR and other aid organizations have virtually no access to western Kosovo and the only road they can use occasionally is the main one between Peo and Djakovica.

Meanwhile, UNHCR said, the flow of people from Kosovo to Montenegro continued unabated, with several persons arriving daily in Montenegro. A total of 10,400 people have now left for Montenegro.

The agency said that now that the border with Albania appeared to be sealed, the only exit route for those fleeing Kosovo seemed to be the border with Montenegro.

UNHCR said that the Montenegrin authorities and aid workers were scrambling to deal with the influx.

In New York, Secretary-General Kofi Annan continued to closely follow the situation in Kosovo, a statement issued by his spokesman said. Mr. Annan welcomed the efforts made by President Boris Yelstin to bring about a solution to the conflict in that region. "He very much hopes that these efforts will be successful, thus eliminating the need for the use of force, " the statement said. He called on the parties to urgently pursue negotiations with a view to bringing this "tragic" conflict to an immediate conclusion, the statement concluded.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the fighting broke out in the Moxico province of eastern Angola.

UNHCR is sending a team to the Congolese towns of Dilolo and Bandundu which are hosting 3,000 and 20,000 new arrivals respectively. The mission is expected to leave Kinshasa on Monday with representatives from the government and other agencies. The representatives will spend five days evaluating the situation in those towns.

Earlier this week, UNHCR staff had to leave the field offices in Luau and Cazombo in Angola for security reasons.

UNHCR Spokesman Kris Janowski said that there were also reports that many large groups of displaced people were moving eastward from the capital to the interior. Reports from remote areas of northern Guinea- Conakry indicated that so far most people fleeing were not Bissau Guineans.

Mr. Janowski said the refugee agency was concerned that lack of medical care, food and drinking water would push more people to the borders.

The UNHCR spokesman said that on Friday the agency's emergency staff were travelling to Ziguinchor and Kolda towns in southern Senegal. On Thursday, a UNHCR emergency team left Conakry for the border towns of Koundara, Kamsar and Gaoul in Guinea-Conakry opposite eastern Guinea Bissau.

In a statement to mark Africa Refugee Day, which is observed on 20 June, Ms. Ogata said more than 500,000 Sierra Leoneans are now refugees in Guinea and Liberia. Images of the recent exodus, she said, are a reminder that excluding people from their own societies sows the seeds of division and conflict which erodes societies from within and destroys the work of peace makers.

Africa Refugee Day marks the date, 24 years ago, when the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Refugee Convention entered into force. Ms. Ogata said there are two overlapping levels of responsibility for helping refugees. States have to implement the principles of protection under the OAU Convention. This includes ensuring asylum seekers are given protection, while making sure that providing asylum does not create security problems for host countries or countries of origin.

People also have responsibilities, she said. Building peace can only succeed if it is rooted in a sense of solidarity among all members of a society -- including refugees and returnees.

Ms. Ogata said a meeting between the UNHCR, the OAU, and representatives from 8 Central African countries which met in Kampala last month was an important step in replacing the language of confrontation with that of consultation, in an effort to identify solutions to refugee problems.

In a statement issued by his Spokesman, the Secretary-General reiterated the appeal he made in his June 16 report on his mission of good offices and said he trusted that all parties involved will abstain from any action which could add to the tension.

The United Nations has been trying to secure a peaceful settlement to the problem of Cyprus since the outbreak of fighting between the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot communities in 1963.

The Organization is currently trying to get the leaders of the two communities to hold face-to-face talks to resolve their dispute.

Legal experts and senior government ministers from more than 150 countries taking part in the debate outlined their positions on several unresolved issues such as the jurisdiction of the court and how big a say the Security Council will have in determining cases brought before it.

United Nations Legal Counsel Hans Corell said that attacks against UN personnel should be among the crimes falling within the jurisdiction of an international criminal court. He also raised the issue of UN staff giving evidence before the court and said the modalities would have to be worked out.

Over the next four weeks, delegates will negotiate the court's draft statute which has been hammered out by legal experts over the last two years. The Chairman of the Drafting Committee, Cherif Bassiouni, said on Friday that much work remained to be done before the draft statute could be finalized. He said that a number of working groups were dealing with the different proposals.

According to Mr. Bassiouni, some of the provisions were fairly well agreed on, others had a large number of brackets, indicating disagreement over the wording, while others had alternative texts proposed. "So in effect you can say that there is are multiple levels of readiness of the various texts," he said.

He said that the text fell into three categories: that which involved a substantial number of political issues, that which involved both technical and political issues, and that which was of an exclusively technical nature.

"Our task at the Drafting Committee is not of a substantive nature; the rules of procedure very clearly say that ours is a technical task," Mr. Bassiouni pointed out. He explained that the Drafting Committee received text and then went over it for linguistic reasons and to ensure the flow of the language.

In his monthly progress report on Western Sahara, the Secretary- General says the substantial increase in the pace of identification would, if sustained, enable the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in the Western Sahara (MINURSO) to identify all applicants from tribes, other than three tribal groups which remain the subject of contention.

A total of 127,472 applicants for the referendum have been identified to date, leaving about 20,000 more still to be invoked.

However, the Secretary-General says, the position of the parties regarding the identification of applicants from these groupings is a serious concern and the problem of the contested applicants remains unresolved. He said his Special Representative for the Western Sahara will continue to seek from the Moroccan Government and the Frente POLISARIO practical and concrete ways of resolving the problem by June. The Secretary-General urged both parties to cooperate in seeking appropriate solutions to the problem.

The report notes that the deployment of MINURSA military units, an engineering unit from Pakistan and a demining unit from Sweden, has been postponed following Morocco's decision not to permit United Nations military personnel to retain their own weapons and ammunition.

The UN has asked for the decision to be modified in order to enable established peacekeeping practices to be followed, according to the report. The Secretary-General has urged the Moroccan Government to conclude the status-of-forces agreements with the UN without delay to facilitate operations by MINURSO military personnel. He has also urged Mauritania and Algeria to do the same.

Speaking at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on Thursday, Director- General Frederico Mayor said there was a growing need to defend freedom of expression in the face of the rising violence against journalists. Already in 1998, 19 press-people have been killed. Mr. Mayor condemned the murders and the fact that their perpetrators were seldom brought to trial.

The Director-General appealed to Russian Federation authorities to bring the killers of the journalist, Lariss Yudina, to justice. "Every blow to freedom of expression and press freedom is a blow to democracy," he said. "There was a compelling need to safeguard journalists from violence and UNESCO will act whenever and wherever it can to promote the freedom, pluralism and independence of the media."



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