United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-07-27

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Monday, 27 July, 1998

HEADLINES

• Head of UNICEF says people in southern Sudan are in the worst conditions she has ever seen.
• WFP issues urgent appeal for funding of emergency food operations in Sudan.
• UN mission in Angola sends team to investigate alleged massacre in Lunda Norte province.
• UN representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina says main priority there is to introduce the rule of law.
• Secretary-General appoints new deputy for United Nations Environment Programme.

"It is the worst crisis Sudan has faced in ten years," Carol Bellamy told reporters at a press briefing in New York on Monday. Ms. Bellamy was referring to the 1989 famine during which a quarter million people died there.

Ms. Bellamy visited the famine-stricken areas of southern Sudan -- including the Bahr Al Ghazal region where a cease-fire between government troops and rebels from the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) was declared a week ago. "I saw people in the worst conditions I have ever seen, " she said of her visits to the cities of Wau and Panthou, where tens of thousands of malnourished refugees have been concentrating to seek assistance.

Ms. Bellamy noted that therapeutic feeding was sorely needed in southern Sudan because many people "are too sick" to feed themselves normally. Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) -- a consortium of humanitarian agencies that includes UNICEF -- was planning to double its therapeutic feeding centres in the Bahr Al Ghazal region from 24 to 48 now that a cease-fire has been declared, Ms. Bellamy said.

During her visit in Sudan, Ms. Bellamy also met with government officials in Khartoum to whom she communicated her view that three months was "insufficient time" for relief operations, and that it should not be limited to Bahr El Ghazal.

"We will need a great deal of help from the donor community if we are to prevent an all-out famine in Sudan," said WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini in a press release. "I ask donors to search for any means to help us save these people."

The announcement came as the food crisis in Sudan continued to worsen, especially in the southern part of the country. Some reports indicate that as many as 80 people are dying of malnutrition each day in Wau, the main city in the south-western Bahr Al Ghazal region.

WFP's air-drop operation in the Sudan, which delivers 7,500 metric tonnes of food per month, is the largest in the agency's history. WFP hopes to double it to 15,000 metric tonnes of food each month between August and October.

The alleged massacre took place in the middle of last week in the diamond- mining village of Bula, said Fred Eckhard, the Spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General.

Mr. Eckhard said that Government officials reported to the MONUA team that about 40 men armed with AK-47 rifles and hand grenades killed 215 people there, 88 of whom were burned in their huts. An additional 70 people were reported to have been seriously injured. The MONUA team members flew over the village, which they described as "burned and deserted."

Human rights officers who interviewed 10 survivors in a Luanda hospital reported that the victims described their attackers as belonging to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). They said the armed men surrounded the village and than entered it, killing everybody they could before looting the place and burning it to the ground.

The MONUA team will return to Lunda Norte this week to continue its investigation, Mr. Eckhard said.

In a briefing to reporters on Monday, Carlos Westendorp described how, despite some great obstacles to normalization, the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is improving. "The bottle is half-full," he said, adding that there is "still half the bottle to be filled in the coming months and coming years."

The return of refugees to their homes was described by Mr. Westendorp as a second challenge facing the international community, calling this process "the litmus test for reconciliation in the country."

Only 11,000 refugees have returned to their homes in the last year. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) had estimated that more than 50,000 would have returned by now.

Among the improvements mentioned by Mr. Westendorp, who spoke to journalists after reporting to the Security Council, were the establishment of a new party on the Croat side and a pluralistic party system in the Republika Srpska, where elections are scheduled for September. Freedom of movement, a common license-plate system, and a single currency were other improvements he highlighted, along with some progress towards privatization that would eventually give a boost to the local economy.

Despite this progress, and plans to overhaul the judicial and electoral processes, Mr. Westendorp said that there would be no normalization "until Karadzic is in The Hague." He was referring to the Bosnian Serb leader who, along with Ratko Mladic, was been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal.

"It is a problem of the collective guilt of the population that has to be put only on one or two or three persons," the UN High Representative said. "When this is done, then we can speak of normalization and reconciliation."

Mr. Kakakhel, 54, is a career diplomat who has served as Pakistan's ambassador to Ethiopia and Rwanda, as well as High Commissioner to Kenya, among other posts. He will take office on 1 August.

With the rank of Assistant Secretary-General, Mr. Kakakhel is now UNEP's second in command. He takes over the position from Mr. Reuben Olembo, who will become Special Representative of UNEP's Director General, Klaus Töpfer.

From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

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