United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-05-26

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Wednesday, 26 May, 1999

Latest Developments

HEADLINES

• UN Secretary-General urges G8 to spur economic growth, respond to needs of poor nations.
• UNHCR reports halt to Kosovo refugee border-crossings to former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
• Time to bring about Africa that Africans deserve, UN leader says in message to OAU forum in London.
• EU joins UN agricultural agency in effort to aid pesticide-free cotton production in Asia.
• UN food agency appeals for safe and unimpeded access in Sierra Leone.

In a letter to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, chair of the Group of 8, the Secretary-General asked the Group's leaders to adopt policies favouring "more balanced patterns and higher levels of output growth" and to consider additional steps to protect the international financial system against instability. The letter, which was made public on Wednesday in advance of the G8 summit on 18-20 June, also stressed the need to take quick action to reduce the debt of the poorest countries and to increase development aid.

Such efforts are urgently needed, the Secretary-General says, because recent financial crises have reversed in a matter of months the economic and social gains of many decades, returning large sectors of the world population to impoverishment and, in a period of low economic growth threatening to leave billions in perpetual misery.

"The internationally agreed upon goals of poverty eradication and social progress in the developing countries are simply not achievable so long as world output continues to grow at its present sluggish rate," the Secretary- General says in his letter. In addition, the slowdown is "aggravating the imbalances in trade among the leading industrial powers, thereby threatening the stability of the international financial system."

Drawing attention to UN proposals for strengthening the international financial system, Mr. Annan calls for additional measures "to prevent the recurrence of devastating crises like those of 1997-1998."

In his letter, the Secretary-General welcomes the emerging consensus that bold measures should be taken quickly to relieve the debt burden of the poorest countries, but cautions that such relief should not come at the expense of official development assistance, known as ODA. He also calls for a commitment to tor reverse the decline in ODA and to explore innovative ways to mobilize additional resources for development.

More than 30,000 people have flooded into the country in the last five days, 7,500 of them on Tuesday, according to UNHCR. The latest arrivals had reported that another 10,000 to 15,000 were lined up on the Kosovo side waiting to cross. However, the UN agency, which had feared a new crisis in the overcrowded refugee camps, said that the border was closed.

In Albania, about 220 people crossed the border at Morini on Tuesday, said UNHCR. Among the latest group were prisoners freed from Smrekovnica prison in northern Kosovo, reportedly to make room for hundreds of new detainees. Around 1,300 out of a reported prison population of 3,000 have been released over the last four days. The latest arrivals from this group told of widespread beatings, very little food and water.

Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian mission, which has just wrapped up an exploratory visit to Kosovo and other parts of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, met with authorities in Belgrade today to discuss such issues as education, emergency and humanitarian relief, health, human rights, reconstruction and rehabilitation.

The mission leader, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sergio Vieira de Mello met with Yugoslav Foreign Minister Javanovic. Mr. Vieira de Mello raised UN's concerns over the trial which began in Belgrade today of two Australian representatives from the non-governmental organization, CARE, and reports of the rounding up of men by Serbian authorities inside Kosovo.

(Visit UNHCR's for in-depth coverage.)

"In an era of fundamental change in Africa and the world, it is time to seize the moment and bring about the Africa that Africans deserve," the Secretary-General said in a message to the OAU "Africa Day" conference in London, which was delivered on his behalf by UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast.

Recent efforts by both organizations to forge a broader and stronger relationship have led to several initiatives towards achieving peace, ending poverty and providing humanitarian assistance on the continent, the Secretary-General said.

The Secretary-General lamented, however, the "vicious tandem" of poverty and underdevelopment still working in Africa today, stressing that attempts to raise investment and economic growth were being undermined by continued conflict throughout the continent.

It required the political will to solve conflicts by political and not military means; to take good governance seriously; and to promote economic growth, social justice and human rights, the Secretary-General said. "It is time for Africans to begin to reap the benefits of their sacrifice, and to move from the fragile recovery of today to a more solid foundation for tomorrow," he said.

The 12 million-Euro ($12.7 million) programme, which will be carried out in Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, Philippines and Vietnam, is designed to reduce insecticide use by farmers by more than 50 percent, while increasing production.

In the next five years, around 90,000 small cotton farmers will learn more about cotton agronomy, cotton agro-ecosystems and alternative pest control techniques, FAO said. The aim is to keep the balance between pests and their natural enemies and to keep the spraying of expensive and potentially damaging and dangerous insecticides to an absolute minimum.

In announcing the project, the UN agency stressed that globally more insecticides are used on cotton than any other crop. In 1995, cotton accounted for 14 percent of a total of about $12 billion in global insecticides sales.

The project includes three of the four largest cotton producing countries -- India, China and Pakistan -- which grow almost half of the world's cotton. These countries account for over two-thirds of the world's cotton area treated annually with insecticides and are regarded as major markets by the international and domestic pesticide industry.

"Farmers will finally learn that an unsprayed cotton field is not necessarily devastated by pest outbreaks. The EU/FAO project will help countries to intensify cotton production and increase incomes in a sustainable way," said Niek van der Graaff, Chief of the FAO Plant Protection Service.

The UN agency started working on more environmentally-friendly production methods in developing countries in the 1960s. Currently FAO manages community programmes on rice and vegetables involving more than one million farmers in 12 Asian countries.

The Rome-based agency said in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, that a large portion of the country had been inaccessible to it and other humanitarian agencies because of persistent insecurity. Some regions had been cut off from humanitarian assistance for a long time.

"We hope the ceasefire pledge to allow safe and unhindered access to all people in need will be quickly implemented by all parties to the conflict," said Paul Ares, WFP Regional Manager for coastal West Africa.

It is estimated that some 2.6 million Sierra Leoneans, more than half of the country's population, are beyond the reach of any relief intervention. For four months, WFP aid deliveries outside Freetown, the Sierra Leonean capital, have been severely constrained by the closure of the main road linking the city to the southern towns of Bo and Kanema due to high insecurity.

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

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