United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-07-21

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Wednesday, 21 July, 1999

HEADLINES

• Deployment of UN civilian police at unprecedented rate, says top UN official.
• Secretary-General says voter registration in East Timor relatively peaceful.
• Members of Security Council urge Ethiopia and Eritrea to take steps to end their conflict.
• Over 50,000 new refugees flee fighting in central Africa in three weeks, says UNHCR.
• World airline passenger traffic to pick up through 2001, says UN civil aviation agency.

Briefing correspondents at UN Headquarters on Wednesday, Mr. Ruggie said a system was now in place to rapidly deploy and train the civilian officers being sent to the province to help maintain civil law and order. There were already 156 UN officers in Kosovo, with an additional 100 scheduled to arrive every five days. Within a month, the rate of deployment would double.

The lightly armed UN officers were fully cooperating with the international security force (KFOR), which stood at 34,000 heavily armed troops, but each side was carrying out very different tasks assigned to them by the Security Council, Mr. Ruggie said. The KFOR was handling security and public safety, while the job of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was to get up and running and to coordinate civilian operations, including humanitarian relief, institution-building and economic reconstruction.

Asked when the UN would take over responsibility for security and public safety from KFOR, Mr. Ruggie said it was never intended that the UN civilian police -- even when fully deployed -- would be responsible for establishing a secure environment. Instead, the Security Council had clearly assigned that job to KFOR. The lightly armed police could make only a marginal contribution to the efforts of the 34,000 heavily armed troops working to ensure security and public safety.

Nearly 100 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were working with the United Nations in Kosovo, Mr. Ruggie continued. As for UN agencies, UNHCR was assisting more than 700,000 returning refugees; the World Food Programme (WFP) was feeding 650,000 internally displaced; the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was carrying out intensive programmes to meet the needs of children. Projects were under way to repair schools, so the school year could begin on time in September. Teams of investigators from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia were gathering evidence from some 200 sites of alleged war crimes.

Meanwhile, at a press conference in Geneva, Carl Bildt, the Secretary- General's Special Envoy for the Balkans, said UNMIK was fully operational with additional personnel arriving in the region daily. The UN was now addressing the immediate task of stabilizing and normalizing the province, restoring economic life and facilitating the return of refugees.

There was simply no way the UN could succeed in Kosovo if it failed in the region, Mr. Bildt said. Since Kosovo was a small place in a region of instability, it was an open question whether the situation was now on a trajectory towards stability or whether it was just a pause before a new storm broke out over the region in a couple of years. It was, therefore, imperative to try to take the political actions now which made the former course more likely, he said.

The United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) is supervising registration of voters for a ballot in August to decide the territory's future.

In the report released on Wednesday, Mr. Annan says serious efforts by Indonesian authorities to provide security have contributed to this positive trend. However, he notes that armed civilian groups continue to challenge the fundamental security which all East Timorese deserve in order to participate fully in a credible consultation process.

Another concern is the plight of thousands of East Timorese who have been either forcibly relocated or intimidated into fleeing their homes, says the report. Besides causing humanitarian problems, this displacement affects prospects for a free and fair ballot since voters are required to register and vote in the same place. UNAMET is developing plans to help these people participate in the ballot also known as the popular consultation process.

Mr. Annan says the ability of pro-independence groups to hold meetings and their access to media are limited, whereas pro-autonomy forces continue to campaign although the campaigning period is not due to begin until early August. UNMET has twice given Indonesian authorities substantial evidence of public officials using their offices and public funds to pressure civil servants to vote for autonomy.

The Secretary-General expresses confidence that the Indonesian Government will take further measures to improve security and says he will reassess the situation halfway through the 20-day voter registration process which began last Friday.

Meanwhile, all registration centres have reopened in East Timor after being closed for half-day on Wednesday, said a UN spokesman. The centres will be closed for a half-day every five days so that registration data can be collated and sent to Sydney where it will be recorded and tabulated on computers.

Earlier, Ambassador Mohammed Sahnoun, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy in Africa briefed the Council about recent developments for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

After the briefing, Council Members issued a press statement urging the two governments to formally sign the modalities to fully implement a framework agreement proposed by the Organization of African Unity (OAU). They expressed the hope that this action might be an important step towards resolving the devastating conflict.

A UN spokesman said that Ambassador Sahoun informed the Council about the humanitarian plight of over 3,000 Eritreans deported from Ethiopia since early July. He also told it about the possibility of a serious disaster in Ethiopia where about 5.3 million people affected by drought and war are without immediate international assistance.

"Political solutions must be found urgently for the crisis in the two Congos," said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata. "The refugees and the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in both countries are suffering untold misery in the absence of political solutions to the fighting in their homelands."

Talks between parties to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have slowed since a peace agreement was signed on 10 July in Lusaka. Some rebel leaders refused to endorse the cease-fire deal and are continuing their advance.

At the same time, fighting between government forces and rebels in neighboring Congo-Brazzaville has been unrelenting since December 1998, when it resumed after a year long pause. This month the conflict pushed thousands of refugees into another neighboring country, Gabon.

Total international and domestic scheduled passenger traffic generated by the airlines of ICAO's 185 contracting states is estimated at 2,630 billion passenger-kilometers for 1998. This is expected to rise to 3,038 billion in 2001.

After a decline in 1998 due to the unfavorable economic situation, the Asia/Pacific region is again to take the lead in the growth rates of airline traffic. The European and Latin American/Caribbean markets are expected to be reasonably buoyant, while the ones of the Middle East and Africa are expected to experience more moderate growth. Only the mature North American market is expected to grow less than the world's average, ICAO says.

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

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