United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-09-01

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Wednesday, 1 September, 1999

HEADLINES

• Secretary-General strongly condemns violence outside UN compound in East Timor.
• Security Council members denounce violence in aftermath of East Timor vote.
• UN-led Kosovo Transitional Council establishes security commission.
• UN special envoy visits Sierra Leone camp for child amputees.
• UN team to set up deployment of military personnel to help implement Democratic Republic of Congo ceasefire.
• Senior UN official returns from talks with Cambodian authorities on establishing Khmer Rouge tribunal.
• UN food agency announces agreement to provide emergency assistance to vulnerable population in Chad.

In a statement by Spokesman Fred Eckhard, the Secretary-General called on the Indonesian police to arrest those responsible for the violence and to take immediate steps to ensure it does not happen again.

According to UN officials, shots were heard late Wednesday afternoon in the vicinity of the UNAMET compound in Dili. Local militia members fired their weapons and threw rocks at a house about 300 metres from the compound. Journalists who witnessed the incident were chased in the direction of UNAMET headquarters, where they took refuge. A few hundred internally displaced persons living in a school next door also took shelter in the compound.

The militia clashed with a group of youth outside UNAMET offices, and more shots were heard. The Indonesian Police dispatched an armed patrol to secure the UNAMET perimeter.

No shots were fired during the hour-long incident, although some rocks and stones were hurled in the direction of the headquarters, and no UNAMET staff were injured.

Mr. Eckhard said the Secretary-General also urged the Indonesian authorities to take firm action to control armed groups and reminded them of their responsibility to protect all UNAMET staff, both international and local. "The United Nations will not allow this violence to deter it from completing arrangements for the popular consultation so that the will of the East Timorese people can be determined," he said.

Meanwhile, UN personnel continued with the job of reconciling the number of ballots cast with the number of people who voted before actually beginning to count the ballots. Although UNAMET security personnel and civilian police are manning the counting centre 24 hours a day, UNAMET requested the Indonesian police to provide additional security at that site.

In a press statement, Ambassador Arnold Peter van Walsum of the Netherlands, Council President for September, said the members underlined the need for the popular consultation process and its follow up to be completed in an atmosphere of peace and security without further violence. "They demand that the local authorities in East Timor take steps to arrest those responsible for the violence and bring them to justice," he said.

Council members also demanded that the Indonesian Government take "immediate steps" to prevent the recurrence of such incidents, in compliance with its responsibility for maintaining peace and security as set out in the agreements authorizing Monday's ballot, and that it guarantees the security of United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) personnel.

The commission will advise the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the international security force, KFOR, on how to resolve specific security concerns and to help set priorities for UN international civilian police deployment.

The meeting also agreed that UNMIK would deploy a group of international police to Orahovac to help defuse tensions and meet the security concerns of the local population, which is opposing the deployment of Russian soldiers.

During the meeting, UNMIK chief Dr. Bernard Kouchner, put forward further proposals to transform the Transitional Council into an "interim governing council." Discussion will continue next week on changes that would give a Kosovar political body more executive responsibilities than held by the current Council.

Dr. Kouchner, who chaired the meeting, also urged the Council to name by week's end a commission to address the matter of detainees and prisoners still being held in Serbia. The commission would be chaired by the Office of the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights and include representatives from families of detained or imprisoned people.

Mr. Otunnu visited the Murray Town Amputee Camp, which hosts some 200 of the country's estimated 900 child amputees. Later, the Special Representative went to a rehabilitation care centre and transit camp for abandoned children outside the capital Freetown as well as the National Workshop Centre, a camp for displaced persons.

On Thursday, Mr. Otunnu is scheduled to meet with former child soldiers and child prisoners of war as well as the President of Sierra Leone, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.

A three-person team from the UN Department of Peace-keeping Operations will leave New York on Thursday for Nairobi, where it is expected to assemble the initial group of 20 UN military liaison officers, the spokesman said.

Four team members will support the Joint Military Committee -- set up by the agreement to help disarm the fighters and monitor the ceasefire -- while six members will establish an advance UN headquarters in Kinshasa.

The remaining 16 will be dispatched to the capitals of the other signatories of the 10 July Lusaka ceasefire accord: Angola, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Talks focused on the legal and practical aspects of establishing, under Cambodian law, a mixed tribunal with the participation of international judges and prosecutors, the spokesman said.

The tribunal would prosecute the Khmer Rouge leaders responsible for the most serious crimes carried out between 1975 and 1979.

The $1.2 million programme will provide 45 days worth of rations to vulnerable people, including single mothers, widows living on their own, the elderly and the disabled. Some families have been reduced to one meal a day, or to one every two days, because of insufficient food reserves, WFP said.

The operation is part of a $23 million emergency food aid project approved by WFP in favour of populations threatened by food shortages in Mauritania, Senegal, Chad, Gambia and Cape Verde.

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

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