United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-10-06

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tuesday, 6 October, 1998

Latest Developments

HEADLINES

• General Assembly honours United Nations peacekeepers as it marks fiftieth anniversary of UN missions of peace
• Secretary-General says that United Nations peacekeepers have saved tens of thousands of lives over past 50 years.
• Secretary-General presents three Dag Hammarskjöld medals to families of United Nations peacekeepers who gave their lives for peace.
• President of Botswana says African conflicts deserve equal attention by the United Nations.
• United Nations survey says opium production dropped but area under cultivation increased in Afghanistan.

"We pay tribute to hundreds of thousands of men and women who have, in the past 50 years, served under the United Nations flag in more than 40 peacekeeping operations around the world, and we honour the memory of more than 1,500 United Nations peacekeepers who have laid down their lives in the cause of peace," reads the Declaration, which was adopted without a vote.

Reiterating its support for all efforts to promote the safety and security of United Nations peacekeeping personnel, the Assembly affirmed its commitment and willingness to help ensure that United Nations peacekeepers are able successfully to fulfil the tasks entrusted to them.

Also by the Declaration, Member States recalled with pride that United Nations peacekeeping forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize. They also welcomed the establishment of the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal as a tribute to the sacrifice of those who have lost their lives while serving in peacekeeping operations under the operational control and authority of the United Nations.

Addressing a special commemorative meeting of the General Assembly held to mark the fiftieth anniversary of United Nations peacekeeping, the Secretary- General noted that there is no reference to "peacekeeping" in the United Nations Charter. Instead, the concept of peacekeeping evolved as an improvisation. "Indeed, peacekeeping has been one of many activities through which our Organization has shown its ability to adapt to circumstances, to find its way round obstacles, and to make itself relevant to the actual problems at hand," observed Mr. Annan.

The Secretary-General cited peacekeeping operations in Namibia, Mozambique and El Salvador as clear examples of success. "But we have also found ourselves maintaining calm in some seemingly intractable stalemates," he acknowledged, "such as Cyprus and the Middle East."

"And in some places -- Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia -- we have found ourselves standing by, in impotent horror, while the most appalling crimes were committed," the Secretary-General continued. There, the United Nations had learned the hard way that sometimes peace had to be made -- or enforced -- before it could be kept. "We will forever measure our proudest achievements against the memory of those worst of days," he said.

The mission of United Nations peacekeeping must continue, he said. "Too much remains to be done, too many innocents are dying even as we speak, for us to think of leaving the field now."

Since 1948, there have been 49 United Nations peacekeeping operations. Thirty-six of those were created since 1988, the year in which United Nations peacekeeping was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Well over 750,000 military and civilian police personnel, and thousands of other civilians, from 118 different countries, have served in United Nations peacekeeping operations.

The Secretary-General also announced that a memorial would be built to honour "those brave men and women". Funded from the proceeds of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to United Nations peacekeeping forces in 1988, the memorial will be dedicated to the memory of all those who have given their lives serving the United Nations in the cause of world peace.

The first medal was bestowed on the very first United Nations peacekeeper to die in the line of duty -- René de LabarriŠre of France, who served with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) and was killed in June 1948 by an explosion.

The second medal was awarded to the family of Count Folke de Bernadotte of Sweden. In 1948, as Mediator for Palestine, Count Bernadotte played a key role in United Nations efforts for peace in the Middle East. On 17 September of that year, he was murdered by terrorists in Jerusalem.

The third medal was awarded to the family of Dag Hammarskjöld, the second United Nations Secretary-General. "During his years as Secretary-General, Hammarskjöld put in place the main elements of peacekeeping, which have served the international community through the cold war and up to the present day," said Mr. Annan. Secretary-General Hammarskjöld died on 18 September 1961, in what is now Zambia, when his plane crashed on his fourth trip to the region in connection with United Nations operations in the Congo.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted that much had been learned since Dag Hammarskjöld's death, yet men and women were still dying in United Nations peacekeeping operations. "It would be comforting to think that in the new century such sacrifices will no longer be necessary and ceremonies like this a thing of the past," he observed. "Let us dedicate ourselves to the effort to make that wish come true."

President Festus Mogae said that preventive deployment has been put to use successfully in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the separation of belligerent forces has also been used successfully to contain the otherwise explosive situations in Cyprus and Lebanon.

The President of Botswana noted however, that the African experience in peacekeeping had been slightly different. "In most cases, conflicts have smouldered and festered to calamitous proportions on our continent as a result of international inertia, or should we call it Africa fatigue." He cited Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Great Lakes Region as examples of this inertia.

The leader of Botswana stressed that African states were ready and willing to bear their fair share of peacekeeping operations on the continent but lacked logistics and financial wherewithal. Pointing out that there was ample scope for the improvement of African peacekeeping capacity, President Mogae said that Africa had over the years acquired practical experience in the field and through cooperation with other countries.

The President of Botswana also spoke about the military intervention by members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to stop an attempted coup d'‚tat and public disorder in Lesotho and a rebellion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With regard to Angola, the President of Botswana said that it had become increasingly clear that the leader of the National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA) had no intention of meeting its obligations under a peace agreement to end the conflict in that country.

In a survey released in Vienna on Tuesday, the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) estimates that Afghanistan total opium poppy production for 1998 was about 2,100 metric tonnes compared to 2,800 metric tonnes recorded in 1997. The survey indicates this reduction was mainly caused by unfavourable weather conditions in the region throughout the year. According to UNDCP, an unusually long 1998 winter season, heavy and continuous rains and hail storms in southern Afghanistan, and unseasonal rains in the northern part of the country are all factors which adversely affected the opium yield.

UNDCP says that this drop in opium production will reduce the amount of heroin available on the illicit drug markets by 70 tonnes. "Though this positive result cannot be attributed to a strong anti-drug action by the Taliban, the fact remains that 70 tonnes of heroin are more than double of the total amount of heroin seized world-wide in a year," said Pino Arlacchi, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention.

The UNDCP survey points out, however, that opium poppy cultivation increased during the 1997/1998 growing season in 9 of the 13 provinces where opium is grown. The survey adds that opium poppy was also cultivated, for the first time in 1998, in two new provinces of Loghar and Laghan and several new districts.

Mr. Arlacchi appealed to all parties in Afghanistan to exert their best efforts to dissuade the farmers from planting opium poppy in the coming season, especially in the new areas. "If this appeal will go, once again unheard, I will propose to the donor countries to strengthen the controls at the borders of Afghanistan with neighbouring countries, to block the exports," Mr. Arlacchi said.

UNDCP says that opium produced in Afghanistan finds its way into the heroin markets in Europe, the United States and countries of the Asian region where large addict populations exists.

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

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