United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-03-18

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Thursday, 18 March, 1999

HEADLINES

• Security Council members demand immediate halt to fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
• UN Secretary-General calls for rescheduling of elections in Guinea- Bissau.
• Rwanda war crimes tribunal releases suspect indicted for killings of 10 Belgium peacekeepers and former PM.
• UN finances still hostage to unpredictable payment of dues by Member States -- chief management officer.
• Seven former US Secretaries of State plead with Congress to pay UN dues.
• Secretary-General's reported backing of a 20 per cent US share in UN budget a "misunderstanding" -- UN spokesman.
• President of UN Economic and Social Council appeals for globalization to be given human face.
• Chairman of UN Special Commission denies role in halting production of vaccines for livestock in Iraq.
• Some $200 million of new compensation awards approved to pay for damages stemming from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
• Rebel forces in Sierra Leone release abducted children to UNICEF.
• Speedy ratification urged for optional protocol to convention on ending discrimination against women.
• UN assessment mission sets out for Jakarta and East Timor.
• UN food agency's emergency supplies in Sudan at dangerously low levels.

Following a briefing by Kieran Prendergast, the Under-Secretary- General for Political Affairs, the President of the Security Council, Ambassador Qin Huasun of China, said that Council members welcomed the efforts of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resolve the conflict.

Council members encouraged the Secretary-General to redouble his efforts, in cooperation with the Organization of African Unity, to bring the parties to the negotiating table, Ambassador Qin Huasun said.

In his latest report to the Security Council on the situation in Guinea- Bissau, Secretary-General notes that the Government and the self- proclaimed military junta have taken significant steps to implement the Abuja Agreement of 1 November 1998.

Mr. Annan notes, however, that the planned deadline of the end of March for the holding of elections would be now impossible to meet "owing largely to accumulated delays in the implementation of the peace accords."

The Secretary-General says that, notwithstanding some delay in the peace process caused by the resumption of fighting on 31 January, the Government of National Unity was subsequently installed on 20 February. The effective functioning of the Government, however, has been hampered by a number of obstacles, including lack of adequate facilities and personnel.

On the military and security front, the Secretary-General notes that the parties have committed themselves never again to resort to arms. He also points out that the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group has deployed 600 troops, comprising contingents from Benin, the Gambia, Niger and Togo, and that Mali has announced its intention to sent a contingent of 125 soldiers.

The Prosecutor had asked the Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, to drop the indictment against Bernard Ntuyahaga for crimes against humanity and hand him over to the Tanzanian authorities to be extradited to Belgium for prosecution. The Prosecutor argued that Belgium held concurrent jurisdiction in connection with the deaths of the peacekeepers.

The Tribunal accepted the Prosecutor's request to withdraw the charges but declined to grant the request to hand the accused over to the Tanzanian authorities. The Arusha court argued that it did not have jurisdiction to release a person who was no longer under indictment into the custody of any given State.

Describing the UN's financial picture at a press conference, Mr. Connor said, "We have no capital, we have no reserves, we borrow from some Member States when other Member States don't give us the income we need."

Mr. Connor cited positive changes in the three indicators used to measure the UN's financial situation. Total combined cash of $736 million was higher at the end of 1998, unpaid assessments of $2.031 billion were lower and the amount owed to Member States for troops and contingent-owned equipment was down slightly to $872 million. He also cited some worrying trends including a drop in peacekeeping cash from $923 million four years ago to $768 million at the end of 1998. The situation was saved because the deficit in regular budget cash was also lower.

For the end of 1998, the deficit was $40 million, much less than in the last three years, because the US made a significantly larger regular budget cash payment in the final quarter. Also, 117 Member States paid their regular budget assessment in full, compared to 100 the previous year. As a result, the chronic series of large deficits in regular budget cash had been broken in 1998, and the need to cross-borrow substantial amounts from peacekeeping cash to fund the shortfall in the regular budget cash account had greatly subsided.

However, the amount owed to Member States for troops and contingent-owned equipment totalled $872 million, virtually the same as in the two previous years, despite the fact that the level of peacekeeping had decreased from $1.4 billion to under $1 billion.

The letter appeared in an advertisement placed by the Better World Fund, which is part of the UN Foundation set up to administer Ted Turner's $1 billion gift to United Nations causes.

"As former Secretaries of State, we know first-hand the importance of the United Nations and its agencies in securing global peace, stability and prosperity," the letter says. It warns that the U.S. cannot lead if it ignores its basic international responsibilities. The letter also points to the important reforms which have been carried out so far, and says that the payment of US arrears is critical to continuing the reform process.

The comment came in reaction to a popular New York Times column which quoted Senator Jesse Helms as saying that the Secretary-General had recently told the Senator that "he agreed to a 20 per cent US share" of the UN regular budget. The US is now assessed 25 per cent.

Stressing that there appeared to be "a misunderstanding" on this point, the Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General said that Mr. Annan had consistently maintained that, in his view, Member States might accept a reduction in the US share from 25 to 22 per cent, but that 20 per cent would be very difficult to achieve.

In an address to a two-day High-Level Symposium on Trade and Development, which concluded in Geneva on Thursday, Ambassador Fulci said governments and corporations must be socially and environmentally accountable in pursuing global economic integration. Partnership and not hegemony was the key element and trade must be inclusive if it was to promote broad-based and universally shared development, he said.

Ambassador Fulci said he would like to see the Council adopt this summer a manifesto against poverty that embodied a realistic concept of practical steps to bring tangible results that could be taken in the immediate future.

The symposium was organized by the World Trade Organization (WTO) as part of an ongoing process for greater transparency and involvement by civil society. Earlier in the week, another symposium focused on trade and environment.

In a recent letter to the Secretary-General, Iraqi Foreign Minister of Mohammed Said Al-Sahaf had written that Iraqi efforts to end the spread of the disease had been hampered by the small amount of vaccine available, "particularly since work in the laboratory that was producing the vaccine was halted when the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) destroyed all its equipment."

Ambassador Richard Butler took issue with that statement stressing that it did "not accord with the facts." In a letter to the President of the Security Council, Ambassador Butler said that Iraq admitted in July 1995 that the facility at Daura was not purely a civilian facility, but had been used for biological warfare agent production, research and development. He added that in 1996, 28 pieces of equipment at the Daura facility, which had been identified by Iraq as used for biological warfare production, were removed and destroyed by Iraq under UNSCOM's supervision. Some 40 major pieces, originally imported for the production of food and mouth disease vaccine remained, as their use in the biological warfare programme had not been established, the head of UNSCOM said.

Ambassador Butler said that production of the vaccine was halted unilaterally by Iraq in September 1992 and that not all the equipment at the facility was destroyed by UNSCOM in 1996. He also noted although foot and mouth disease vaccine was on the list of items subject to UNSCOM's export/import monitoring system, the Commission only required notification and did not impose impediments on import of the vaccine.

The Commission's Governing Council, which concluded its thirty-first session on Thursday, approved awards with a total value of $173,603,873 covering 259 claims filed by corporations. It also awarded a total of $14, 653,766 in respect of 24 claims brought by 14 Governments.

At the same time, the 15-member Council expressed concern over the significant amount of funds being held by some Governments that had not yet been distributed to claimants within the one year time limit set by the Council. The Council decided to withhold future payments to the Governments that fail to distribute monetary awards to the claimants or to return the undistributed funds to the Compensation Commission.

UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said on Wednesday she was encouraged by the consistent flow of children being handed over to her agency by the rebels. Last week, two groups of 31 and 20 abducted children were released.

The fighting in Sierra Leone has been marked by a total disregard for international conventions designed to protect civilians, particularly women and children, from the horrors of war. UNICEF hopes a changed environment might allow delivery of humanitarian assistance to closed areas. "Increasing confidence creates the stage for more direct access to women and children caught behind the frontlines," said Ms. Bellamy.

UNICEF is developing programmes to provide emergency schooling and psychosocial support for teachers and children. Special emphasis will be given to counselling girls who have been raped and to the social integration of child soldiers.

The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted last week by the Commission on the Status of Women, culminating four years of negotiations.

Stressing the symbolic importance of the adoption of the Protocol during the year marking the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Member States to show the same commitment to speedy ratification of the Protocol, as they had shown to the Convention.

Under the Protocol, individuals or groups of women can submit complaints about alleged violations of the Convention to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, an international body of 23 independent experts. The Protocol further entitles the Committee to initiate inquiries into situations of grave or systematic violations of women's rights - a provision to which States, upon ratification or accession, may object.

The six-member team is led by Francesc Vendrell, the Director of the Asia and Pacific Division in the UN Department of Political Affairs.

The agreement on the consultation mechanism was reached by the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia and Portugal during their last week's meeting with the Secretary-General.

After visiting Jakarta and East Timor, the team is scheduled to go to Australia, New Zealand and Portugal. The mission is expected to return to New York early in April to prepare a report in advance of the next round of East Timor talks at the senior officials level to be held at UN Headquarters on 14 and 15 April, the spokesman said.

Because of civil war, drought and floods, some 2.3 million Sudanese rely on WFP food to survive, but the agency's emergency stocks are predicted to finish at the time they are needed most, during the "hunger months" from May to October. During the same period last year, millions of Sudanese faced starvation when fighting escalated and crops failed.

In January, WFP issued an emergency appeal in response to the dramatic deterioration in food security around Bahr el Ghazal. So far, donors have contributed only 55 per cent of the resources requested.

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

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