United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-01-12

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tuesday, 12 January, 1999

HEADLINES

• UN Security Council extends mandate of UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone for two months.
• Humanitarian agencies warn of humanitarian disaster in capital of Sierra Leone.
• Security Council demands immediate stop to attacks against aircraft in Angola.
• Reports of shelling stop plans to excavate crash site of UN plane downed in Angola.
• Secretary-General hails role of Group of 77 and China in work of United Nations.
• UN food agency airlifts emergency relief to 50,000 people in Brazzaville.
• Ceasefire extension a must to avert further calamity in southern Sudan: World Food Programme.
• Secretary-General's envoy for children and armed conflict reiterates call for ban on child soldiers.
• UN refugee agency concerned about continuing tension in Kosovo.
• UNHCR repatriates first group of Cambodians from Sisaket province in Thailand.

In unanimously adopting resolution 1220 (1999), the Council encouraged all efforts to resolve the conflict and restore lasting peace and stability in Sierra Leone. It requested Secretary-General Kofi Annan to keep it closely informed on the situation and to submit a further report by 5 March with recommendations on UNOMSIL's future deployment and mandate.

The Council took note of the Secretary-General's intention to reduce UNOMSIL's number of military observers and to retain a small number in Conakry, Guinea, who would return to Sierra Leone when conditions permitted, together with civilian support staff under the leadership of the Secretary- General's Special Representative, Francis Okelo.

Local staff from the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) report that hundreds of thousands of people were trapped in their homes without water or electricity unable to go out to search for food.

According to WFP, in some parts of the city, desperate people have been venturing out to look for food, but soldiers forced them back into their homes. All shops and markets have been closed since the capital was invaded by rebel forces last Wednesday.

Meanwhile, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York that reports from the region on Tuesday indicated Freetown was quiet. The rebels appeared to be out of the city and forces from the Economic Community of Western African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) might have retaken it. However, he added, the city was described as a "smoking ruin" with extensive fire damage reported.

Two UN-chartered planes were downed on 26 December and 2 January over territory controlled by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Four commercial aircraft are missing.

Concluding that UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi had not complied with its earlier resolution of 31 December 1998, the Council reiterated its demand that he cooperate immediately and in good faith with the search for and rescue of possible survivors.

By its unanimous adoption of resolution 1221, the Council reaffirmed its resolve to establish the truth about the tragic incidents and determine responsibility through an immediate and objective international investigation. It asked the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to support the investigation as soon as conditions on the ground permitted and urged Member States with investigative capability and expertise to assist the United Nations.

The Council expressed its readiness to pursue reports of violations of the measures previously imposed against UNITA and to take steps to reinforce their implementation. It said it would consider additional measures, including in the area of telecommunications.

The United States Representative, Peter Burleigh, questioned the appropriateness of the reference to Chapter VII, since the resolution did not seek to authorize new international enforcement action. The United States, he said, was concerned that such a reference might be misunderstood as a step in that direction.

Ambassador Burleigh said his Government doubted the wisdom of considering the imposition of sanctions against communications with UNITA. The last three weeks had shown the crucial importance of being able to communicate quickly with UNITA on search and rescue operations and other humanitarian concerns.

UN spokesman, Fred Eckhard said on Tuesday that an engineering unit with the UN search team had planned to excavate the site of the first UN- chartered aircraft, which was downed on 26 December.

The spokesman said the exact location of a second United Nations- chartered aircraft downed on 2 January had not yet been confirmed, even though it was believed to be located not far from the first crash site.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Coordinator, Benon Sevan, had left Angola and was expected back in New York on Tuesday night to brief Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the search operations, Mr. Eckhard added.

Speaking at a ceremony in New York to mark the formal turnover of the chairmanship of the Group of 77 from Indonesia to Guyana, the Secretary- General reaffirmed his commitment to close cooperation between the group and the United Nations.

Mr. Annan paid tribute to the leadership of Indonesia over the past year which, he said, was a tumultuous period for the world economy and for Indonesia itself. He said that instead of looking inward, Indonesia remained engaged at the United Nations and the Group of 77.

The Secretary-General said that the economic and social challenges of 1999 were shaping up to be every bit as numerous and complex as the ones of the past year. He noted that many of the countries of the Group of 77 were hit very hard by events of 1998 and that they knew all to well that the global crisis was far from over. Mr. Annan cited socio-economic problems such as unemployment of millions of workers, lack of education for millions of children, price increases of food staples, crime and violence.

"If the dark cloud of crisis has had any silver lining, it is that the past year was especially fruitful for international economic cooperation at the UN," the Secretary-General said. He added that dialogue had been strengthened and issues and assumptions re-visited. Through it all, the Group of 77's voice had been central, he said.

Clement Rohee, the Foreign Minister of Guyana, the incoming chairman, said that the Group of 77 was firmly committed to strengthening the capacity of the United Nations to defend and satisfy the development needs of its membership. He commended the efforts of the Secretary- General to renew and revitalize the United Nations through focused reform which could conceptually return development issues to a high priority on the multilateral negotiating agenda. "I wish to assure him that our group will continue to work with him to make our organization more responsive to the prevailing needs of its membership," he said.

The first of 30 WFP flights arrived into Brazzaville on Monday carrying 22 metric tons of food. WFP will deliver 600 tons over the next 6 days to people who fled to northern areas of the city last month after fierce fighting broke out in the region.

According to WFP, many people have eaten virtually nothing for the past three weeks and malnutrition was settling on the weakest, with children and pregnant mothers rapidly losing body weight

The insecurity in Brazzaville had completely cut off the city from any external sources of food, except for WFP aid flights which could only bring in limited supplies. The food will be distributed through the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), assisted by WFP staff working in Brazzaville.

With only three days left before the expiry of the ceasefire, renewed in October last year by the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, WFP warned that an escalation in fighting would strike a deadly blow to thousands of fragile people. "So much help has been provided, and so many lives have been saved. We simply cannot accept that a resurgence in fighting wipes it all away," said Catherine Bertini, WFP's Executive Director.

The UN food agency said that throughout this year, more than two million people in southern Sudan, a third of whom are in Bahr El Ghazal, would continue to require relief food in order to survive. WFP, which launched the largest humanitarian food airdrop in history, continues to deliver thousands of tonnes of food each month to the victims of famine, flooding and fighting.

With the onset of the dry season in southern Sudan, aid workers are bracing themselves for a traditional scaling up in the civil war. In January last year, major clashes in Bahr El Ghazal forced thousands of people to flee their homes to villages where the population was already weak, which sparked off what evolved into one of the worst famines of this decade. The cease-fire in place does not extend beyond the famine- hit province of Bahr El Ghazal.

Briefing reporters in Geneva, Mr. Olara Otunnu said that he strongly supported the efforts to strengthen the standards on the recruitment and participation of children in hostilities by raising the age limit from 15 to 18 years. He said that those efforts formed part of an overall strategy to eradicate the use of children in armed conflicts.

Mr. Otunnu said that the international community should set in motion a worldwide movement of political and juridical pressures to raise the age limit. He stressed the need to include a mechanism to help children on the ground since some of them were attracted to participate in armed conflicts when socioeconomic breakdowns had left behind a vacuum.

While in Geneva, Mr. Otunnu also addressed the Working Group on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He told the Working Group that the United Nations should address the social, economic and political conditions that gave rise to the participation of children in wars.

He outlined some aspects of his report to the General Assembly which, among other things, contain recommendations on the impact of sanctions on children. Mr. Otunnu called for a review of sanctions regimes in Iraq and Burundi. Concerning Iraq, he proposed a system-wide effort to produce a package of options to mitigate the impact of sanctions on Iraqi children, especially in the areas of nutrition, health and education. On Burundi, Mr. Otunnu said that the issues of children in conflict and their demobilization should be part of the Arusha peace process.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that there was high tension in the province following the killing of an Albanian journalist on Monday and the capture last week of eight Serbian soldiers by Kosovo rebels. UNHCR added that shelling by government troops of villages near Podujevo and Suva Reka last week led to fresh displacement of about 2,000 people.

At the same time, according to UNHCR, life appeared to be returning to normal in Malisevo which had been a ghost town for months. The UN agency said that a third of Malisevo's original population of 3,000 had gone back and more people were returning. UNHCR said that it was sending the first convoy to Malisevo to deliver warm clothes, blankets and repair material.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that the returnees would eventually go to Mondulkiri in the east of Cambodia. At the same time, according to UNHCR, an increasing number of Cambodian refugees living in Phu Noi have expressed the wish to repatriate to eastern provinces of Cambodia, and not to Anlong Veng, the former Khmer Rouge stronghold where they lived before going to Thailand.

UNHCR said that it had sent a staff member to the eastern provinces of Cambodia to assess how to bring returnees to these remote areas. It seems that a significant number of refugees originate from eastern Cambodia, their families having fled first to Phnom Pehn during the war in the early 1970s and then were pushed towards western Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge years, according to UNHCR.

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

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