United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-03-17

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Wednesday, 17 March, 1999

HEADLINES

• Security Council reviews situation in Central African Republic, urges parties to live up to agreements.
• UN Secretary-General says Khmer Rouge leaders should be brought to justice at international tribunal.
• Security Council members welcome last week's intra-Afghan talks as step in the right direction.
• UN agencies step up relief aid to Afghanistan.
• UN Secretary-General welcomes accord between Democratic People's Republic of Korea and US on underground site.
• Flexible policies, access to markets needed to address global economic crisis, says head of UN trade agency.
• UN food agency concerned at serious malnutrition in Angolan city of Huambo.
• UN envoy continues bid to resolve name dispute between Greece and former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
• UN agricultural agency helps Mediterranean countries to promote rabbit breeding to solve food problems.

The appeal came in a press statement by the President of the Security Council, Ambassador Qin Huasun of China, after the Council discussed the situation in the country and heard a briefing by Oluyemi Adeniji, UN Secretary-General's Special Representative and Head of United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic (MINURCA).

Council members also called on the Government, in collaboration with all political parties, to take concrete steps to establish a new electoral commission for the presidential elections and to continue the efforts to restructure its security forces.

The need for the Government to fulfil its obligations was also stressed by Mr. Adeniji, who pointed out that the extension of the mandate of the UN mission in the country was conditional on the government's actions.

Speaking to the press today after he briefed the Security Council, the Secretary-General's Special Representative underscored the Government's obligation to keep the agreements with the international financial institutions on a structural adjustment programme which is aimed at improving the country's finances.

Mr. Adeniji said that the Government was also expected to make progress on the restructuring of the country's armed forces and to ensure that salaries were paid regularly in order to avoid the kind of socio- economic problem which created the internal crisis in the Central African Republic. He added that the new armed forces should reflect the ethnic diversity of the population and should be given sufficient training to make it conscious of its responsibilities.

"Impunity is unacceptable in the face of genocide and other crimes against humanity," said the Secretary-General in identical letters addressed to the Presidents of the UN General Assembly and Security Council that accompany the report of a group of experts he appointed to assist Cambodian authorities in responding to serious human rights violations.

"I am firmly of the view that if the international standards of justice, fairness and process of law are to be met in holding those who have committed such serious crimes accountable, the tribunal in question must be international in character," the Secretary-General said.

With the release of the full report, the Secretary-General has asked the General Assembly to reopen the agenda item dealing with human rights questions so that the Assembly could consider the report.

Last Friday, the Secretary-General met with the Foreign Minister of Cambodia, Mr. Hoi Namhong, to discuss the groupþs report. The two men agreed that the Cambodian national judiciary in its current state was unlikely to meet minimal standards of justice, although later Mr. Hoi stressed that since the crimes were committed in Cambodia and the victims were Cambodians, the Khmer Rouge leaders should be tried by a national tribunal with international assistance.

In a statement to the press, the President of the Security Council, Ambassador Qin Huasun of China, said on Wednesday that members of the Council expressed the hope that the parties would continue negotiations to reach agreements on a ceasefire and the creation of a broad-based and fully representative government. Such a government, the Council members stressed, should be acceptable to all Afghans to ensure national harmony and good governance in compliance with the universally recognized norms of international law in human rights, in particular the rights of ethnic minorities and women and girls.

The Security Council members also emphasized the need for the Afghan parties to be more effective in combating drug trafficking and in preventing the use of Afghan territory to carry out acts of terrorism.

In its latest update on UN humanitarian activities in the country, OCHA reported that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had completed distribution of 25 tonnes of spring wheat seed with a matching quantity of mineral fertilizer in Kabul and Logar.

In the area of health, the World Health Organization (WHO) supervised the campaign for the Extended Programme on Immunization and the Save the Motherhood Initiative in the urban areas of Farah, Herat and Badghis provinces. WHO also provided medical supplies to clinics and hospitals in Afghanistan's western region. A WHO team visited Argo and Darayeem districts of Badkhshan to deliver supplies and conduct training courses. A team from UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, visited Kunar Province to monitor water, sanitation and hygiene promotion projects.

Meanwhile the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, Dr. Kamal Hossain, continued his visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan to meet with United Nations and Afghan officials as well as representatives of non- governmental organizations. In Pakistan, Dr. Hossain was scheduled to meet with officials of the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as refugee and other Afghan groups in Peshawar.

Spokesman Fred Eckhard said the agreement confirms the Secretary- General's belief that a determined diplomatic effort can resolve even the most serious issues and that the Secretary-General was pleased the two sides reaffirmed their commitment to the Agreed Framework of October 1994, in its entirety.

According to that accord, the United States and other countries would supply the DPRK with oil and Western nuclear reactors for energy use and the DPRK would cease its graphic-moderated nuclear reactor programme and allow international monitors to inspect those sites.

In a keynote address to a high-level symposium for government officials and scholars, Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said that while trade could do wonders, it could not perform miracles when it came to addressing the on-going economic crisis.

"One of the lessons of the crisis was to remind us that trade is not an autonomous force acting in a vacuum," Mr. Ricupero said.

In calling for greater cooperation on trade issues, Mr. Ricupero said trade negotiations should not be used to deny developing countries the active policies needed to acquire competitive advantages, especially when industrialized countries used many of the same policies during their own process of development.

He also said it was no longer tolerable to continue the hypocrisy of stressing the role of trade as the central ingredient of development and then allocating very small amounts of funding for technical cooperation in trade-related activities.

The two-day symposium was the second event organized by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva to increase awareness of government positions and non-governmental concerns while providing participants with an opportunity to improve their understanding of how the WTO works and how the organization is addressing the issues of trade and environment and trade and development.

The UN agency said on Wednesday that it is "gravely concerned" at the malnutrition rate among some 128,000 people forced to flee their homes and seek refuge in abandoned buildings in Huambo. At least 20 percent of the children are showing physical symptoms of seriously inadequate food supplies with 3 per cent suffering from severe malnutrition, according to a recent survey by WFP, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the non-government organization, Save the Children.

"The local hospital does not yet have the capacity for rapid response for such large numbers of people," said Francesco Stippoli, WFP's representative in Angola. To alleviate the problem, WFP and its partners have opened nutrition centres to provide emergency food three meals a day for the severely malnourished children.

Fighting between government and rebel forces in the crop-growing areas of central Angola is spreading to the north and northeast. Harvests are expected to be considerably reduced this year, further undermining the country's fragile food security, according to WFP.

Spokesman Fred Eckhard said that as part of that effort, representatives of both sides met at UN Headquarters on Tuesday under Mr. Vance's auspices. Taking part in the meeting was the Permanent Representative of Greece to the United Nations, Ambassador Christos Zacharakis, and Ambassador Ivan Tosevski of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

During the talks the parties exchanged views in the context of article 5 of the Interim Accord of 13 September 1995, said the Spokesman. In the Accord, both countries had agreed to continue negotiations, under the auspices of the Secretary-General, in an effort to reach agreement on the difference between them over the name of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The UN agency is helping Mediterranean countries to set up a network that will provide governments and producers with information on planning rabbit output, promote training activities, and elaborate production, processing and marketing programmes. The network will also assist in formulating technical cooperation projects for funding by bilateral, multilateral, non- governmental organizations and the private sector.

The underlying rationale is that rabbit breeding can be easily adapted for industrial and backyard production, which provides additional income to small farmers and upgrades the diet of poor rural and urban households. Rabbits provide highly nutritious, low-fat, low-cholesterol meat and are easy to transport and market for food, fur and raw skin for garments and gloves.

"Backyard rabbitries are the perfect answer to today's demand for sustainable development projects," said FAO livestock production specialist, Ren Branckaert.

The network, known as the "International Observatory on Rabbit Breeding in Mediterranean countries", will hold its first meeting on 18 and 19 March at FAO headquarters, in Rome. Many of the 14 participating countries are from the Arab world, including Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia.

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

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