United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-07-08

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Thursday, 8 July, 1999

HEADLINES

• Demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants key to ending conflicts, Security Council says.
• UN survey of Kosovo villages finds widespread destruction to housing.
• Head of UN mission in Kosovo meets with Yugoslav opposition leaders to discuss Serb exodus.
• Secretary-General ready to deploy UN military observers in Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Secretary-General pledges to work with Sierra Leone to implement peace agreement.
• UN human rights commissioner urges Indonesia to investigate militia attacks in East Timor.
• Iraqi oil industry in acute need of spare parts to boost production under UN oil-for-food plan.
• UN food aid agencies warn of risks of malnutrition in Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

In a presidential statement adopted at an open meeting in which representatives of 26 UN Member States took part, the Council expressed its concern that in a number of conflicts fighting continues despite the conclusion of peace agreements and the presence of United Nations peacekeeping missions.

A major contributory factor to such a situation has been the continued availability of large amounts of armaments, in particular small arms and light weapons, to conflicting parties, the Council said.

While reaffirming its commitment to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Council stressed the need for implementation of a number of practical measures to promote the success of the peace-building process.

The Council recommended that peace agreements include clear terms for disarmament, demobilization and integration of ex-combatants, including the safe disposal of arms and ammunition. It suggested that Governments contributing to peacekeeping operations establish databases of experts on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, as well as training in disarmament and demobilization. The Council also underscored the need to prevent and reduce the destabilizing flow and illegitimate use of small arms and light weapons.

Addressing the Security Council at the opening of the debate, Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fr‚chette said that in considering specific crises, as well as UN peacemaking or peacekeeping missions, the Council should make the needs of child soldiers a central concern.

The problem of child soldiers -- more than 300,000 of whom have been used in conflicts between 1995 and 1997 -- will not be solved until the international community addresses the social, economic and political factors which make children susceptible to recruitment, she said.

According to preliminary results released on Thursday, 64 per cent of homes in the 141 villages inspected are severely damaged or completely destroyed. Another 20 percent sustained moderate damage. About 40 percent of water sources are contaminated, many by household garbage and human remains.

The survey, which was led by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), also revealed that the availability of food has been dramatically reduced over the past three months as shops were looted or destroyed and farm production ground to a halt. Up to 88 percent of villages lacked functioning health facilities.

The High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, said that what was needed in some of the gutted towns was immediate reconstruction not just emergency humanitarian assistance.

Meanwhile, UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, has found that between 40 to 50 percent of schools have been damaged. Two other UN agencies, the Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Food Programme, reported a severe wheat deficit, an 80 per cent loss in corn production and big losses of livestock.

The group which calls itself "The Alliance for Change", includes nine opposition leaders from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, among them Zoran Djindjic from the Democratic Party and Vuk Obradovic.

During the meeting with Mr. Vieira de Mello, the opposition leaders said they were the first to speak up against President Slobodan Milosevic and that the Serbian people did not know about the atrocities in Kosovo. They said they wanted to have good relations with ethnic Albanians.

Mr. Vieira de Mello pointed out the dire situation of 3,000 Serbs under siege in the Kosovo town of Orahovac where more than 100 men had been reportedly killed in alleged massacres during the war. Mr. Vieira de Mello said that unless suspected criminals among these people were dealt with under the rule of law it would be difficult to ease the plight of the other Serbs.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), about 80 percent of Orahavac's pre-war ethnic Albanian population of 25,000 have returned, with the 3,000 remaining Serbs gathered in the same neighbourhood in the city centre.

UNHCR also said that despite a generally improved security climate in Kosovo, minority groups were living in increasingly perilous conditions and ethnic tensions were high in several areas.

The UN refugee agency and KFOR, the international military force, are making every effort to enable minority Serbs and Roma or gypsies to stay in their homes. However, in the wake of the growing number of incidents where minority Kosovars have found themselves in life- threatening situations, UNHCR is faced with the difficult question of when and whether to help evacuate them.

Spokesman Manoel de Almeida E Silva said on Thursday that in the next few days, the Secretary-General would dispatch a technical survey team to assess the feasibility of deploying UN military observers.

The announcement comes the day after several African Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministers and rebel leaders meeting in Lusaka adopted the ceasefire agreement which is expected to be signed during a summit on Saturday.

The Spokesman said that the head of UN Peacekeeping Operations, Bernard Miyet, has already informed the Security Council of Mr. Annan's willingness to seek authorization to deploy the observers at an early date, with a possible subsequent deployment of a full-scale UN peace- keeping operation.

Reacting Wednesday to the news of the agreement, Mr. Annan described it as "an important first step towards the restoration of peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in the Great Lakes region of Africa". In a statement released by his spokesman, the Secretary-General urged the Heads of State and the rebel leaders to sign and otherwise ratify the agreement as a matter of urgency and called on them to immediately stop hostilities, pending its entry into force.

"Who can forget the brutal amputation of limbs that went on here and all the atrocities that took place. But I hope, following the signing yesterday, that this will be a thing of the past," Mr. Annan told reporters after meeting with Sierra Leone President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. "I can promise you the United Nations will work hand-in-glove with the Government and people of Sierra Leone to bring peace about."

Under the peace accord, RUF fighters will receive amnesty for alleged atrocities. The rebel group is accused of having committed massacres, including killings, rape and amputations during the conflict.

The Secretary-General's Special Representative, Francis Okelo, signed the agreement as a witness, with a notation saying that the United Nations would not recognize that amnesty as it applies to gross violations of human rights.

A spokesman for the Secretary-General, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, said in New York that the amnesty and pardon would not apply to international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of international humanitarian law. He noted that the agreement had provisions for a truth commission, but it was not yet clear how that would function. "It is very clear to us that the agreement is a political solution for years of suffering and destruction and that there must be justice as well."

Last Sunday, armed militia threatened UN personnel who were accompanying a humanitarian convoy near Liquica. The attack came on the heels of two separate incidents last week, in which militia members threw stones at a United Nations office in Maliana, injuring an electoral officer, and surrounded a UN residence in Vikeke.

"The violence aims clearly at keeping the East Timorese from exercising their right to determine the status of the territory," said the High Commissioner in a statement.

Ms. Robinson said the Indonesian authorities must make good on their pledge to investigate the attacks and bring to justice those responsible. "The militias must not be allowed to succeed," she stressed.

In June 1998, the Security Council authorized Iraq to buy, under the UN's oil-for-food programme, $300 million worth of oil spare parts in order to reach the ceiling of $5.256 billion.

The Secretary-General based his recommendation on the conclusions of an expert group he had dispatched to Iraq last month to evaluate the oil industry's requirements in spare parts. Mr. Annan transmitted the group's findings and a detailed list of parts and equipment necessary for increased oil production in a letter to the Security Council.

The Secretary-General says in his letter released at UN Headquarters on Thursday, that Iraq has been continuing the practice of overproduction of crude oil from wells without sufficient well pressure maintenance. As a result, the group of experts has found that a significant number of wells have ceased production, with approximately 20 per cent of them being irreparably damaged.

Noting that Iraq's current incremental production rates will be achieved with serious environmental damage, as well as damage to oil wells, the Secretary-General says that the rates will begin to decline unless much needed chemicals for drilling mud and perforating and other equipment and spare parts are delivered to Iraq in a timely manner. Some of those parts, the Secretary-General stresses, have been put on hold by the so-called 661 Committee, a body set up by the Council to oversee implementation of the sanctions against Iraq.

As of June, a total of 958 applications for spare parts and equipment, with a value of over $508 million, had been received by the UN Office of the Iraq Programme, of which 785, with a value of $392 million, were circulated. Of the circulated applications, the 661 Committee had approved 561 to the tune of $287 million, while 201 applications, with a total value of $95 million, were put on hold.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme said that while cereals had made up most food aid to the country since 1995, it was increasingly important other foods such as beans and oils were provided to overcome long-lasting nutritional deficiencies that lead to stunting and chronic malnutrition.

"In childhood and in a certain degree even in adolescence, malnutrition can lead to irreversible stunting, which means that a severely malnourished person will never reach the height normally expected in a given population, " says a report released on Thursday by the two agencies.

According to the report, which is based on a recent joint crop and food supply assessment mission to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 62 per cent of the 1,800 children under the age of seven surveyed suffered from stunting.

Predicting that food output this year will remain "well below needs" even under an optimistic weather scenario, the UN agencies stress that in addition to ongoing emergency food assistance, "it is imperative that international support be provided for recovery and rehabilitation in agriculture to ensure longer term food security".

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

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