United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-10-23

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: [email protected]

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Friday, 23 October, 1998

HEADLINES

• Secretary-General and Assembly President welcome Middle East peace agreement.
• United Nations refugee agency escorts humanitarian relief convoys to Kosovo.
• Taliban signs agreement to pave way for return of United Nations staff in Afghanistan.
• United Nations humanitarian office in Afghanistan welcomes Taliban commitment to ban landmines.
• UNHCR reports finding 3,000 refugees who fled fighting in Guinea-Bissau to Guinea.
• Accepting a peace prize in Seoul, Secretary-General says United Nations peacekeeping must continue.
• Secretary-General calls for acceptance of democracy as "midwife of development" to benefit poor and rich alike.
• Marking UN Day, Secretary-General says challenge of globalization can be met through collective efforts.
• Meeting under auspices United Nations environment agency, African ministers reach common position on mechanism for environmentally friendly development.
• Merck corporation to contribute drugs to World Health Organization effort to eliminate elephantiasis.

In a statement issued in Seoul, in the Republic of Korea, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that he was delighted at the news that the impasse in the Middle East peace process had finally been broken. "This is a big step," he said and expressed the hope that the agreement would lead to renewed efforts to conclude a comprehensive peace for the region.

The Secretary-General congratulated Yasser Arafat, the President of the Palestinian Authority and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for "having had the courage to make the compromises necessary for peace."

For his part, the President of the General Assembly, Didier Opertti said that the entire community shared the joy on the results of the talks between the Palestinian and Israeli leaders, under the auspices and direct participation of President Bill Clinton of the United States and the participation of King Hussein of Jordan.

The Assembly President said that the implementation of the agreement would eliminate some of the most important obstacles and "encourages us to hope that in the near future the Israeli and Palestinian peoples will be able to engage fully in the task of consolidating and enjoying a peace obtained as a result of such hard efforts."

Mr. Opertti congratulated all the parties involved in achieving the agreement "that constitutes the most eloquent testimony of the spirit of conciliation and high political vision of those who participated in its creation."

According to Kris Janowski, Spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the aid includes high protein biscuits, family food parcels, wheat flour, mattresses, stoves and hygienic items. The 16-truck convoy carried items from the World Food Programme (WFP), Mercy Corps International, Children Aid Direct and Catholic Relief Service.

UNHCR staff recently visited two villages in Glogovac municipality, 20 kilometres west of Pristina. "The impression our staff got on the ground is that while some people trickle back to their ruined homes, widespread destruction of housing and fear of the continued Serb military and police presence prevent significant return," Mr. Janowski told reporters in Geneva.

In Dobrosevac, 18 kilometres west of Pristina, a UNHCR team visited two families who had returned to the village and were repairing their houses. "The two families of twelve people are sharing the same room," said Mr. Janowski. "They have no access to drinking water since their wells have been intentionally polluted with dead animals and garbage."

UNHCR estimates that only 20 per cent of the 1,400 inhabitants have returned to Dobrosevac. "People fear the police's presence around the village, and the shooting during the night and early in the morning," Mr. Janowski said.

According to the Office of the United Nations Coordinator for Afghanistan, the eleven-point agreement commits the Taliban to provide satisfactory reports to the United Nations on investigations into the murders of three United Nations staff members, Colonel Carmine Calo, Mohammed Nasir Habibi and Mohammed Hashim Bahrsayar. It also obliges the Taliban authorities to release Abdul Ghani Baluch and Haji Rashid who are United Nations national staff currently held in detention. Under the agreement, the Taliban is also obliged to appoint Regional Security Liaison Officers.

Other points in the agreement include an undertaking to provide adequate security for United Nations staff and premises and to preserve the rights of United Nations staff members who may be detained.

Once these points of the agreement have been implemented, a small United Nations team plans to go into Afghanistan to assess the security on the ground. If the reports are favourable, a small number of United Nations international staff may then begin to return to support their Afghan colleagues who have been keeping the programmes running for the past two months. All United Nations international staff were evacuated after cruise missiles landed in the eastern province of Khost on the night of 20 August.

The agreement was concluded after negotiations between acting Planning Minister, Qari Deen Mohammad and acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdur Rahman Zahid of the Taliban of the Taliban and Acting United Nations Coordinator, Ahmad Farah, and the Acting Designated Official for Security, Ian Bullpitt.

OCHA's office in Afghanistan on Friday said that it was pleased to learn of the commitment of the Taliban announced by Supreme leader Mulla Muhammad Omar to a total ban on the production, trade, stockpiling, and use of land- mines within Afghanistan.

Afghanistan remains one of the countries most severely affected by landmines and unexploded ordnances. Thirty of its thirty-three provinces are reported to be contaminated in varying degrees by such material. Much of this land could be used productively.

The United Nations humanitarian office in Afghanistan said that it hoped the commitment by the Taliban to ban landmines would serve to alleviate much of the suffering of the people of Afghanistan.

"Refugees have also arrived in the past 48 hours in Conakry by boat with people of other nationalities who have left the embattled capital, Bissau," UNHCR Spokesman Kris Janowski told reporters in Geneva. He said that people were running from battles which ended a three-month truce between military mutineers and forces supporting President Vieira. As many as 8,500 people, mostly Guineans living in Guinea-Bissau, but also Ghanaians, Nigerians, Gambians and Senegalese, had arrived in Guinea since fighting resumed. Local authorities reported that arrivals continue at a rate of about 100 people a day.

"Refugees said they were uncertain about whether the border with Senegal, to the north, was closed, and reported that large numbers of displaced people were stranded 35 kilometres outside Bissau as troops allowed people on foot to pass, but stopped all vehicles," Mr. Janowski said.

The Secretary-General, who accepted the Seoul Peace Prize on behalf of the United Nations, dedicated the award to the memory of more than 1,500 men and women who have given their lives in the cause of peace over the fifty years of the Organization's peacekeeping. He said that the first unprecedented mission of peace fifty years ago, was "an attempt to confront and defeat the worst in man with the best in man; to counter violence with tolerance, might with moderation, destruction with dialogue, and war with peace."

The Secretary-General said that ever since that first mission, United Nations peacekeepers have been meeting the threat and reality of conflict, without losing faith, giving in or giving up. Pointing out that since 1948, there have been forty-nine peacekeeping operations, Mr. Annan noted that thirty-six of those were created since 1988, the year in which United Nations peacekeeping was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He added that well over 750,000 military and civilian police personnel, and thousands of other civilians from 118 countries had served in United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Mr. Annan reiterated that the United Nations, forged from the battles of two World Wars, the United Nations was dedicated, above all, to the pursuit of peace and, in the enduring words of its Charter, to saving "succeeding generation from the scourge of war."

The Secretary-General said that the evolution of United Nations peacekeeping from patrolling clearly marked buffer zones and ceasefire lines to the far more complex, multi-dimensional operations in the 1990s had been neither smooth nor simple. He noted that expectations have been placed in peacekeepers without providing them with sufficient resources.

While noting successes of peacekeeping in such countries as Namibia, Mozambique, El Salvador and Guatemala, and in maintaining calm in some stalemates such as Cyprus and the Middle East, Mr. Annan said that the limits of peacekeeping were graphically demonstrated in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In these countries, he pointed out, the international community found itself standing by, unable to act in the face of the most appalling crimes. "But that does not mean we succumb to the fatalism of those who would rather stay at home when conflict rages and fellow human beings are suffering in a distant land," he said.

The Seoul Peace Prize recognized that the United Nations had helped pave the path to peace and emboldened the Organization to believe that it could continue to do so in the century to come, the Secretary-General said in his conclusion.

Addressing the United Nations Association of the Republic of Korea on Friday, the Secretary-General said that political and human rights must be recognized as "key pillars in any architecture of economic progress."

Mr. Annan said that politics and political development as a whole might have suffered a form of neglect during the glory years of globalization. "Extraordinary growth rates seemed to justify political actions which otherwise might have invited dissent," he said, adding that autocratic rule which denied basic civil and political rights was legitimized by its success in helping people escape centuries of poverty. He said that what was lost in the exuberance of material wealth was the value of politics, and "not just any politics: the politics of good governance, liberty, equity and social justice."

The Secretary-General also spoke about people's perception of globalization in the face of a global financial crisis which has created hardships for people. "Globalization is seen by a growing number of people not as a friend of prosperity," nor is it seen as a vehicle for development, but as an ever-tightening vice increasing the demands on states to provide safety- nets while limiting their ability to do so, Mr. Annan said.

The Secretary-General pointed out that the fundamental recognition that lasting prosperity was based on legitimate politics had been joined by a growing appreciation of the need to maximize the benefits of the market while minimizing its costs in social justice and human poverty. To do so, he said, required improvement of regulatory systems, solid and sustainable safety-nets to shield the poorest and most vulnerable, and the advancement of transparency on all sides.

Mr. Annan said that the challenge facing the United Nations and its sister organizations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund was to ensure that the difficulties facing globalization did not become an impediment but gave such cooperation new life and new promise. He suggested that that could be done by emphasizing the importance of civil society and institutional structures of democracy at the national level in all development work and by seeking to strengthen the effectiveness of multilateralism.

In his message marking the Day, Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the promises and perils of globalization. "I believe that over the long term, globalization will be positive," he said. "It draws peoples closer together and offers many of us choices that our grandparents could not even dream of."

But, the Secretary-General pointed out, those benefits were far from being felt equally by all. Millions still lived on the margins of the world economy. "Millions more are experiencing globalization not as an opportunity, but as a force of disruption or destruction, as an assault on their material standards of living or on their traditional way of life," he said.

The Secretary-General said hope could be drawn from the fruitful cooperation between the United Nations and the non-State actors which, taken together, formed "the embryo of a global civil society." Those partnerships for global community were increasing every day. "But if we truly resolve to pool our resources, to set aside our differences, and to work together, there is almost nothing we cannot achieve," he said. "On this United Nations Day, let us rededicate ourselves to that belief, and let us get to work."

The President of the General Assembly, Didier Opertti of Uruguay, said the Day should offer an opportunity for Member States to reflect on whether they had made the Organization not only a tool for managing and solving major international political problems, but also a sounding-board for the problems affecting the daily lives of millions of people. He pointed out that major goals could only be attained through a step-by- step approach. "And it is step by step that we shall draw nearer to the establishment of a society in which the strong will be just and the weak will feel safe."

On the eve of United Nations Day, which is officially observed every year on 24 October, vigils were planned in some 45 cities around the world. At a press conference held in advance of the New York vigil, James Paul, the Executive Director of the World Federalist Movement, pointed out that if every United States citizen would pay just $7 -- an amount less than the cost of attending a movie -- then the country would be able to pay its arrears to the United Nations.

When the United States, a country that was experiencing a period of great prosperity, refused to pay its dues, it sent a terrible message out to the other 184 Member States, Mr. Paul said. ""I represent an NGO, but as a United States citizen I'm terribly ashamed." He said the goal of the vigil was to encourage governments pay their dues in full, on time and without conditions.

The common position on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was reached at a two-day meeting of twenty-six ministers who had gathered in Nairobi, Kenya to consult on issues related to ozone layer depletion, biodiversity, desertification and climate change. The meeting was convened ahead of the fourth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The CDM, is one of the mechanisms established under the Kyoto Protocol adopted in Japan in 1998 as part of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Ministers agreed that "the CDM is a high priority since Africa is the most vulnerable continent when it comes to the impact of climate change."

The mechanism is designed to assist Governments and private entities in industrialized countries to undertake projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. In return, the industrialized countries would receive credit for these projects in the form of certified emission reductions which they can use to meet part of their emission control targets as specified in the Kyoto Protocol.

In his closing remarks, Klaus Toepfer, the Executive Director of UNEP and host of the assembled delegates that UNEP would make every effort to meet the request of African Governments for UNEP to play a more active role in CDM-related activities.

"Merck's generous contribution will greatly strengthen the global coalition to fight lymphatic filariasis," said Dr. Brundtland. "It includes partners from the governments of endemic and non-endemic countries, international organizations of the United Nations family and a number of important non- governmental institutions and other private companies, all working together to overcome this debilitating disease and to improve the health of those served by this effort."

Lymphatic filariasis, which leads to elephantiasis is estimated to affect 120 million in 73 countries. More than one billion people are now vulnerable to this infection. It is transmitted by parasites and results in the huge enlargement of arms, legs and genital organs, causing physical and psychological disability. Efforts to eliminate the mosquito which carries the parasite have failed.

According to WHO, the best opportunity of eliminating lymphatic filariasis is through medicines used to break the endless cycle of infections between the mosquitoes and humans. This can be done by single doses of two-drug treatment combinations based on albendazole, ivermectin and DEC. Merck has offered to make ivermectin available to WHO efforts in Africa. In January, SmithKline Beecham pledged to donate albendazole free of charge to WHO for use by governments and other collaborating organizations until lymphatic filariasis is eliminated from the world as a public health problem. WHO's target date for achieving such elimination is 2020.

From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: [email protected]

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