United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-01-05

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tuesday, 5 January, 1999

HEADLINES

• United Nations suspends humanitarian flights in Angola.
• UN envoy urges Angolan officials to allow search for two downed UN- chartered planes.
• Fighting in Democratic Republic of Congo leads to new exodus of refugees to Central African Republic and Uganda.
• UN food agency distributes food aid to thousands of internally displaced Sierra Leoneans.
• Cambodian refugees in Thailand willing to return home since surrender of Khmer Rouge factions.

On 26 December, a UN-chartered C-130 cargo plane with 10 passengers and four crew went down near the provincial capital of Huambo in the central highlands. Last Saturday, a second UN-chartered C-130 with nine people on board disappeared shortly after take-off from Huambo.

Mr. Eckhard said the suspension of the flights ends the only possible way of delivering emergency relief to many areas in the interior of Angola. Some 40,000 displaced persons were in the key town of Huambo, 65,000 in Malanje and 30,000 in Luena. In all the three towns, national staff members from the UN World Food Programme remained on the ground to assist people in need.

United Nations humanitarian involvement in Angola began in the early 1980s, Mr. Eckhard said. It was assisting approximately one million war victims, including supplying survival rations to 387,000 internally displaced persons fleeing the decades-long internal conflict.

Mr. Sevan is also assessing the growing security threat to UN personnel in Angola, according to UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard.

Mr. Sevan met with the Angolan Minister for Territorial Administration and his deputy, as well as the Deputy Foreign Minister to whom he handed a letter from Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealing for cooperation in mounting a search and rescue operation. Mr. Sevan was also scheduled to meet with the Angolan Defence Minister and members of the Troika of observers -- Portugal, the Russian Federation and the United States -- who oversee the 1994 peace accords.

Spokesman Fred Eckhard said the Angolan Government claimed to have regained control of the town of Villa Nova, eight kilometres from the presumed crash site of the first plane. A United Nations rescue team was standing by in Huambo.

According to Mr. Eckhard, there were reports that the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) had begun to barrage and lay siege to Malanje where the United Nations had a team of six civilian police and one military observer.

Meanwhile, the company which charters the planes to the UN has confirmed that a ninth passenger on board the second missing plane whose name was not on the flight manifest was the son of the South African pilot of the first missing aircraft.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that since last Saturday, some 5,000 terrified Congolese refugees, mostly women and children, had fled the town of Zongo and crossed the Ubangi River to the Central African Republic's capital of Bangui. The refugees told UNHCR that they had fled out of fear that the town was about to fall into rebel hands following the eruption of gunfire in and around it. The United Nations agency said that its staff, together with the International Committee of the Red Cross, provided food and initial health care to the newly arrived refugees.

In Uganda, UNHCR staff had over the past several days registered more than 2,900 new refugees who were also predominantly women and children. The refugees had arrived from the Tutshuru district of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UNHCR said that several unaccompanied and malnourished children had been placed in special care.

UNHCR added that it had transferred the new arrivals from the border zone to a district further north on the eastern shore of Lake Albert where the Kyangwali settlement was already hosting several thousand refugees who had arrived earlier in Uganda and had been supplied with food and medicines.

WFP said that over the last five days, it had supplied desperately needed food to some 20,000 people who have fled fresh outbreaks of fighting between rebels and the forces of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG).

The UN agency said that despite security constraints, it had shipped more food into Kenema, and last week, a convoy of 18 trucks carrying a total of 430 tonnes, had arrived safely in Bo and Kenema. WFP said that it was distributing a one-week food ration to the internally displaced persons from its 1,500 metric tonnes of food in its warehouse in Kenema. The food was enough to feed 160,000 people for one month, said WFP.

According to WFP, the majority of the displaced people were suffering deprivations from enforced travel for several days with little food and only what possessions they could carry. Patrick Buckley, the WFP Representative in Sierra Leone, said that the influx into Kenema was just the tip of the iceberg and his agency was gravely concerned about the situation of several thousands of people it believed were hiding in the bush and waiting for a lull in the fighting to come out.

It is estimated that close to 100,000 people have been displaced by the upsurge of fighting in Makeni and Kono regions in northern and eastern Sierra Leone. WFP said that some of these refugees were starting to arrive in the town of Bo 110 kilometres south of Makeni.

Since the last days of December, around 1,700 refugees have returned to UNHCR-supported camps in Thailand with another 357 scheduled to return on Tuesday, the UNHCR reports.

UNHCR said it was supporting the safe and voluntary return of the whole refugee population, but is concerned that certain groups of refugees are still under strong pressure from some Khmer Rouge leaders who want to control the return movement to specific areas only. Also, large areas in Cambodia still need to be demined before refugees can return safety.

Over 35,000 Cambodian refugees still remain in camps in Thailand.

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

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