United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-06-08

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tuesday, 8 June, 1999

HEADLINES

• Security Council begins consultations on draft resolution to resolve Kosovo crisis.
• Secretary-General's special envoy for Balkans says task ahead in Kosovo is "staggering".
• UN refugee agency concerned Serb forces are continuing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
• UN's atomic energy agency conducts safeguards inspection at Yugoslav nuclear facility.
• Secretary-General recommends six-month extension for UN mission in Sierra Leone.
• Improved security allows UN food agency to renew aid deliveries to southern Sierra Leone.
• UN special envoy for children in armed conflicts reports progress after visit to Colombia.

The draft, worked out by the foreign ministers of the seven leading industrialized nations and the Russian Federation, was introduced this morning in the Security Council, which met behind closed doors for informal consultations.

Speaking to the press after the consultations, the President of the Council, Ambassador Baboucarr-Blaise I. Jagne of Gambia, said that the text would now have to be studied by Council members and that the timing of subsequent Council action would depend on how soon instructions were received from the capitals.

Ambassador Jagne noted that "time is of the essence here" and that during consultations "we have all expressed a sense of urgency".

Speaking to the press in Geneva, Mr. Bildt said the task ahead in Kosovo was staggering and "well beyond anything done so far certainly in Europe and perhaps in the world in the latter part of this century."

Mr. Bildt said the region was profoundly destabilized not only by the flows of refugees and the political tensions, but also by the economic destruction and devastation of trade routes, industry and communication infrastructures. Kosovo could not be considered in isolation from what happened around it and in the region, he said, adding that even if the utmost was done in Kosovo, "it would be dependent on what happened in the region."

Earlier, Mr. Bildt and the Secretary-General's other Special Envoy for the Balkans, Eduard Kukan, met with representatives from UN agencies, private relief organizations, NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Mr. Bildt described the meetings as very constructive and said the United Nations was full steam ahead preparing for peace.

According to UNHCR, the document apparently registers and deregisters a person's official place of residence. Some new arrivals in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia told UNHCR they had fled rather than present themselves to the authorities. Others reported that as they left Kosovo, Serbian authorities were asking them to sign declarations renouncing their citizenship.

In recent days, newly arriving refugees have reported that Serbian forces are continuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing, with hundreds more people waiting to cross the border. Most of those arriving in the country were men. They said women, children and the elderly were still in the hills because they were too weak to make the journey out of Kosovo after months of hiding out and subsisting on corn.

Meanwhile, in Albania, 96 men who had been released from the Smerkovnica prison arrived at the Morini crossing into Kukes on Monday. Over the past two weeks, more than 2,500 prisoners have been freed from the prison, with an estimated 500 remaining.

The inspection, which was carried out on 3 and 4 June, marked the resumption of the Agency's monthly inspections of nuclear facilities in the Federal Yugoslav Republic of Yugoslavia after they were interrupted last January.

The UN Agency said on Tuesday that its three-member team had carried out all planned inspection activities and could confirm -- subject to completion of its analysis -- that it did not find "any indication that the status of the nuclear material at the facility had changed."

The IAEA has a responsibility to inspect the nuclear material at the Vinca Institute under an existing safeguards agreement, according to the Agency.

In his latest report on UNOMSIL to the Security Council, the Secretary- General said recent political developments, including a ceasefire agreement between the Government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the start of peace talks last month, had significant implications for the UN Mission's work.

"It is critical that the Mission should remain in a position to render effective assistance to the peace process in Sierra Leone," the Secretary- General said in recommending UNOMSIL be extended until 13 December 1999. He said that within that time, he hoped to be able to recommend to the Council an expanded mandate to implement a peace agreement.

In welcoming the Government's willingness to talk with the RUF, the Secretary-General said, "This is the first time in three years that a political settlement might be within reach to break the cycle of violence that has held this country in its grip since 1991."

The Secretary-General, however, found "deeply deplorable" the killings and other human rights abuses perpetrated by rebel forces against the civilian population in Sierra Leone, as well as the widespread destruction of property. He called on the RUF leadership to prove its sincere commitment to peace and to ensure the compliance of all its fighters with international human rights standards and humanitarian law.

Since December, WFP food aid deliveries to areas outside Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, have been severely constricted as unsafe conditions forced the closure of the main road linking Freetown to Bo.

A WFP-chartered ship carrying 800 tons of food aid arrived in the port of Nitti, some 200 kilometres south of Freetown. About 146 metric tons of emergency food -- enough to feed 40,000 people for one week -- was then transported on Monday by truck to Bo via a dirt road linking the two towns.

"More than 60,000 displaced people in Bo and Kenema depend on this food," said Paul ArŠs, WFP Regional Manager in coastal West Africa. "Their situation will become critical in the coming weeks if food is not quickly distributed to them."

After WFP ran out of food last April, 51,000 displaced people in Kenema and in nearby Blama received only half of their one-month ration. In Bo, where the aid agency is feeding close to 10,000 displaced people, food stocks were dwindling very quickly.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) welcomed last week's announcement by the Sierra Leonean Government and the rebel forces, the Revolutionary United Front, that humanitarian agencies would have safe and unhindered access to areas under the control of the two parties.

Humanitarian activities will depend on the actual "evolution of the negotiations on a peace accord" taking place in Lome, Togo, UNHCR said.

UNHCR estimates that there are some 400,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and more than one million internally displaced people.

In a briefing Tuesday at UN Headquarters in New York, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflicts Olara Otunnu said that he had launched a broad coalition to support and address the needs of war-affected children during his recent seven-day visit to Colombia.

Mr. Otunnu said the Colombian Government pledged to raise the minimum age of recruitment from 15 to 18 and that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) promised to stop recruiting children under the 15. FARC also agreed to explore, with the United Nations, procedures to demobilize underage children already in its ranks and establish a joint task force on the humanitarian needs of civilians in the demilitarized zone.

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

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