United Nations Daily Highlights, 97-10-15

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Wednesday, 15 October 1997

HEADLINES

• UN refugee agency cares for refugees who have fled conflict-torn Congo- Brazzaville amid rapid change.
• UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq visits three northern governorates to urge ceasefire.
• Secretary-General strongly condemns terrorist attack against civilian facilities in Sri Lanka.
• Australian Ambassador who coordinated landmine talks in Geneva says effective ban requires participation of all.
• Legal Committee considers draft on 1999 centennial commemoration of first International Peace Conference.
• Diplomats tell UN Committee that New York City discriminates against them with parking tickets.
• Japan donates $27 million for World Food Programme relief activities in Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
• UN Economic Commission for Africa official says Internet can help that continent end economic marginalization.

According to a United Nations spokesman, some 33,000 Congolese refugees have fled across the Congo River into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters on Wednesday that there had been 198 new arrivals the day before.

Meanwhile, the United Nations was expected to complete a report to the Security Council on Congo-Brazzaville, where the situation on the ground was described by the UN Spokesman as rapidly evolving. "We have reports that Brazzaville has fallen to the forces of the former President Denis Sassou Nguesso, as well as the major port of Pointe Noire."

Mr. Eckhard, who characterized developments in Congo-Brazzaville as "a confused situation", said that the United Nations would continue its contingency planning for a peacekeeping force while waiting for the Security Council's reaction to the latest news from the region.

United Nations Spokesman Eric Falt told reporters in Baghdad on Wednesday that Mr. Halliday would ask fighting factions to observe a ceasefire in order to enable the World Health Organization (WHO) to carry out a vaccination campaign there. He would also request the fighting Kurdish factions to fully respect their obligations and facilitate the free flow of humanitarian assistance to all the people of the three governorates without hinderance of any sort.

The factions would also be asked to collaborate in preventing the internal displacement of people. Before leaving for the region, Mr. Halliday said it was clearly unacceptable that more people were becoming internally displaced because of "disruption and aggression" within the three northern governorates.

Also on his trip, Mr. Halliday will evaluate the successes and difficulties encountered in the implementation of the "oil for food" programme.

Mr. Falt said every effort was being made by United Nations agencies to continue delivering aid to the northern governorates, bearing in mind the security of the staff. The World Food Programme (WFP) is maintaining its activities despite the fact that "many trucks normally used for food distribution in areas affected by fighting have now been 'borrowed' by the warring factions for military purposes".

The WHO has reported that its activities, which are not currently being impeded, could be affected if the conflict were to spread.

"The Secretary-General is appalled by the news of the bomb attack in Colombo this morning and the resulting loss of life and destruction of property", his spokesman said on Wednesday. "The Secretary-General strongly condemns this terrorist attack, which targeted civilian facilities. He extends his deepest sympathies to the families of the victims."

"A truly global and effective ban on anti-personnel landmines will only be achieved when major users, producers and exporters are brought in a practical and concrete way into the march towards the goal of a total and comprehensive ban", Ambassador Campbell told the General Assembly's Disarmament and International Security (First) Committee on Wednesday.

At a recent conference in Oslo, numerous countries concluded the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti- Personnel Mines and Their Destruction, but a number of key producers of anti-personnel landmines did not participate.

"I can promise that Australia will not be sitting on its hands as we continue to explore the combination of possible approaches which may form the solution to this devastating problem", Ambassador Campbell said. He added that Australia would continue to respond to the humanitarian disaster caused by landmines. "A global ban is essential to stop new mines from being laid, but those in a position to help must not forget the 110 million mines already laid."

Introducing the draft, Jaap Rammaker said, "the first International Peace Conference is generally regarded as the cradle of multilateral diplomacy, a tradition to which the United Nations is the present-day heir".

The draft text would have the General Assembly welcome the programme of action which is intended to contribute to the further development of the themes of the first and the second International Peace Conferences. The Assembly would invite the Netherlands and the Russian Federation to proceed with the implementation of the programme of action, and would invite States to participate in the activities.

A recent letter from the Permanent Representative of the Netherlands addressed to the Secretary-General reviews the achievements of that Conference, which include the Convention on the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes; and the Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land; as well as three Declarations prohibiting, respectively, launching projectiles and explosives from balloons; asphyxiating gases; and expanding bullets.

According to the letter, the year 1999 marks not only the centennial of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference and the resulting Conventions and Declarations, but also the fiftieth anniversary of the four Geneva Conventions for the protection of victims of war of 1949 and the closure of the United Nations Decade of International Law, among other milestone events.

The action programme envisages the celebration of the centennial of the 1899 International Peace Conference at The Hague and in Saint Petersburg as well as activities in other forums connected with the outcome of that Conference.

In addition to commemoration by international and regional organizations, the letter says that "as they did 100 years ago, non- governmental organizations will actively seize the opportunity of the 1999 Peace Conference to express their commitment to the causes that will be addressed during the centennial discussions".

The representative of the United States, Robert C. Moller, did not dismiss the charges outright, but said they had to be proved. He also said that the number of parking tickets issued to the diplomatic corps had decreased significantly in recent months, and efforts were under way to assign new parking spaces for diplomats.

Addressing the Committee on Relations with the Host Country, Mr. Moller said that while the City of New York did enforce its parking policies strenuously, tickets were dismissed when factual defences were provided.

Among those charging that the New York City Police Department discriminates against diplomats when issuing tickets were the representatives of Costa Rica, Mali, the Russian Federation, China and Honduras.

According to Spokesman Fred Eckhard, the money will be used by WFP within the framework of the United Nations Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"The World Food Programme is now reporting a substantial amount of food aid getting into North Korea, just as the Fall harvest is beginning, so they are sounding a bit more optimistic that massive famine would have been averted for this year", Mr. Eckhard said.

In a related development on Wednesday, the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy, welcomed the news of a $5 million grant by the United States to assist children in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The funds, which will be provided to UNICEF through the United States Agency for International Development, will be used to provide urgently needed medical assistance for children and mothers who are the most vulnerable victims of the current humanitarian crisis in North Korea.

UNICEF stressed that while food shortages have made headlines, humanitarian assistance must also focus on health care, and on ensuring supplies of clean drinking water and adequate sanitation. According to UNICEF, hospitals throughout the country lack basic drugs and equipment and the health care structure is in a state of virtual collapse.

"Preventable diseases, such as measles and cholera, take hold in times of crisis and thousands of North Korean children, weakened by lack of food, have already lost their lives because they didn't have basic drugs and health care," Ms Bellamy said.

UNICEF says that the funds will be used to provide immunization against measles, cold chain equipment and technical assistance to hospitals and clinics in 100 provinces. The funds will also be used to provide food for therapeutic feeding within hospitals, nurseries, kindergartens and orphanages.

At the end of a subregional Internet seminar organized in Addis Ababa by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and ECA, Nancy Hafkin, a senior officer in the ECA Development Services Division, told UN Radio that African countries were increasingly realizing the importance of Internet.

Whereas less than two years ago there were only some four countries connected to the Internet, she pointed out, today there are nearly forty- five countries connected. However, Ms. Hafkin added, "countries are making their own way without any kind of road-map, and each one has been following their own ideas about how to get in on this new phenomenon". The Addis Ababa seminar, she said, helped representatives of African governments share experiences and learn what others were doing and what facilities from outside were available to them.

According to Ms. Hafkin, participants at the seminar, which started on Monday, said that the Internet should be considered one of the basic communication services and should be made readily available to all people, like telephone services.

The Internet, according to Nancy Hafkin, will be a major tool to end the information gap between the developed and developing countries and to provide information to people. She said that African farmers, producers of handicrafts and manufactured products as well as the tourism industry which were all trying to compete on a global basis, "cannot do so without information, without instant access to the global markets, and Internet is the fastest, the easiest to use, and the cheapest means in order to compete economically in a global marketplace".

Ms. Hafkin said community centres with facilitators to help show people how to use personal computers could, with the involvement of the private sector, be established in villages and communities in order to provide information.

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

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