UN Secretary General, Spokesman Briefing (97-02-10)

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From: "HR-Net News Distribution Manager" <[email protected]>

10 February 1997
Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY

Referring to an article in yesterday's edition of The New York Times, which also ran in the International Herald Tribune today, concerning the Secretary-General and reform, Mr. Eckhard noted that the words "slow" and "cautious" were used in headlines. The Secretary-General would prefer the terms "patient" and "persistent", he added. He reminded correspondents that the Secretary-General had been in office for only "a little over five weeks". That was a bit early to be drawing conclusions about his progress with reform; the fact that he had promised a package by late summer did not mean that nothing else was happening in between. The Spokesman added that he had tried to announce, piece-by-piece, the things the Secretary-General had done in his first five weeks in office. Thursday's press conference would be a good opportunity for him to sum up the things he had done to date and state where he would go from here.

The Secretary-General had met with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda on Saturday, Mr. Eckhard continued, and they discussed a variety of African crises, primarily the crisis in the Great Lakes region. He urged the parties to seek political solutions to those problems.

The Spokesman drew attention to the fact that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Sadako Ogata, had been in the Great Lakes region over the weekend. She visited the camp at Tingi-Tingi, and she appealed to the rebels advancing westward to avoid that camp. Mr. Eckhard said that the indications today were that the rebels were veering wide of the camp, apparently in the direction of Kisangani.

There were 40,000 refugees displaced by the rebel troop movements from Shabunda, he said, recalling that last week the UNHCR was negotiating with Zairian authorities that had stopped those refugees in the middle of the forest to allow them to move to a place where they could be given assistance. He understood that agreement had been reached that they could move to Kalima, where some of them had already arrived. The UNHCR was in the process of setting up a relief centre there. The United Nations/Organization of African Unity (OAU) Special Representative for the Great Lakes Region, Mohamed Sahnoun, had visited OAU headquarters, in Addis Ababa, over the weekend, to discuss the situation in the Great Lakes region. Today he was headed for Dar es Salaam.

Mr. Eckhard noted that the Secretary-General's report on the United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM III) (document S/1997/115), published today, offered two options to the Security Council. The first stated that if a new government was formed by the end of February, the mission would be extended by two months, during which it would begin the transition to an observer mission. The second option was that if there was no government in place by then, the mission should be extended by one month. If a government was still not named by the end of March, the Council should consider "appropriate steps to address the situation".

Turning to the report by the Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services, Karl Paschke, on the International Tribunal for Rwanda, Mr. Eckhard said that under pressure from the 38th floor, the Secretariat would be able to translate that report into all six official languages by Wednesday, rather than at the end of the month as originally projected. It would be released to correspondents immediately after it had been given to the General Assembly on Wednesday.

The situation in Tajikistan had moved to security phase four on Friday, meaning that non-essential staff were moved out of the country to Uzbekistan on Saturday, the Spokesman said. Remaining in Tajikistan were nine military observers in Dushanbe, three in Garm, three in Khorog and 17 civilians in Dushanbe as well. Twenty-five civilians and 13 military observers had been relocated.

Mr. Eckhard said there had been an incident in Mostar; a group of Muslims had crossed over to the Croatian side of the town to visit a cemetery and there was a shooting in which four of them were injured and one might have been killed. The office of the High Representative for implementation of the Peace Agreement on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Carl Bildt, had issued a statement condemning in the strongest possible terms the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians in Mostar. "This is murder", he quoted Carl Bildt as saying, "and must be treated as such". He added that the statement was available in the Spokesman's office.

Mr. Eckhard said that neither the Security Council nor the General Assembly was meeting today because of the observance of Eid Al-Fitr, marking the end of the month-long Ramadan fast. The Council would take up the situation in Liberia in consultations tomorrow.

Peter Fitzgerald of Ireland, the outgoing Police Commissioner for Bosnia, was in town for consultations, as was his replacement, Manfred Seitner of Denmark, Mr. Eckhard stated, adding that he was hoping to get them for the briefing, probably on Wednesday, if that suited their schedules.

Bernard Miyet, the designated Under-Secretary-General for Peace-keeping Operations, would now start his new job on Tuesday, 18 February, Monday being a holiday.

The Secretary-General would attend an African-American Institute meeting tomorrow evening, and would speak on United States-Africa relations, Mr. Eckhard said. Representative Charles Rangel of Manhattan would receive the first annual Ron Brown award, named after the late United States Commerce Secretary who was killed in a plane crash over Croatia. The event would benefit the African-American Institute, which was a non-profit organization, Mr. Eckhard noted.

The Spokesman said that Nane Annan would host a luncheon today for the spouses of African ambassadors, the first of a series of such luncheons for spouses of ambassadors from the five regional groups.

Mr. Eckhard announced that a list of troop contributors as of 31 January was available in the Spokesman's office.

He also announced, on behalf of the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA), that the World Wildlife Fund would hold a briefing tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. in the UNCA Club on the fourth session of the Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Panel on Forests of the Commission on Sustainable Development "in the run-up to Earth Summit II".

Responding to a correspondent who wanted to know if it was true that at a meeting with the Permanent Representative of France, Alain Dejammet, the Secretary-General had said he was not ready to make a decision on the merging of the Secretariat departments dealing with economic and social issues, Mr. Eckhard said it was an issue that the Secretary-General would address in good time. The conversation had also included the description that the Secretary-General provided of the roles of the Executive Coordinator for United Nations Reform, Maurice Strong, and the Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management, Joseph Connor. He had explained that coordinating reform was a full-time job and that was why he needed a Coordinator in addition to Mr. Connor, who ran a substantive department of the Secretariat. On the plans for reorganizing the economic and social sector, Mr. Eckhard stated that would be a major decision and the Secretary-General was still getting input and would eventually make an announcement.

Also asked if he shared a certain view that the article in The New York Times signalled the "end of the honeymoon" for Mr. Annan, the Spokesman replied that if the premise was for a miracle in five-and-a-half weeks, "you could say yes, the honeymoon is over". He believed that the Secretary-General had accomplished a lot and that correspondents would get from him at his press conference details on measures that had been taken up until now, but which had not been announced. He noted that the article misread some facts, emphasizing for instance, that the Secretary-General gave out contracts of three to five years' duration, contrary to what the Spokesman had told correspondents, that only new appointees got contracts of three years, none longer than that. Others who were reappointed were extended on a case-by-case basis, some of them for only a few months, because the Secretary-General had decided as a matter of policy to enforce the 10-year ceiling on Under-Secretaries-General contained in the recommendations of the Group of 18 set up to review the United Nations administrative and financial functioning. There was a bit more happening than it might appear, Mr. Eckhard said, adding that it was premature to call an end to the honeymoon.

A correspondent said that the general idea of the article was that things were going rather slowly. For instance, he continued, the report on reform, supposed to be delivered in July, was now being pushed forward to the end of the summer. The Spokesman replied he had indeed said so. The Secretary-General had been saying for a few weeks that he would deliver the report in July or August. What he was talking about in the plan concerned changes that Member States were also involved in, something that he had to negotiate with those States.

Continuing, he said that those things that the Secretary-General could do on his own authority, he had been doing since the very first week, such as eliminating a layer of bureaucracy on the 38th floor, thus passing down to the substantive Under-Secretaries-General/Heads of Department authority that had been vested in a small group of advisers on the 38th floor. The functions of the advisers were eliminated and the departments now reported directly to the Secretary-General and to the Security Council. The departments brought their note takers to the meetings between the Secretary-General and senior government officials, all of which opened up the system, delegating authority downward and enabling information to flow throughout the building. That was just the beginning, Mr. Eckhard said, urging, "give it time". He stressed that negotiating the package to be unveiled this summer was a politically complicated process, one that the Secretary-General did not have the authority to control and was going to have to lead.

Replying to a question on whether the Secretary-General was advocating a substantive new approach to the Cyprus talks, Mr. Eckhard explained that the Secretary-General's approach was that there needed to be a concerted effort to try to wrap up the Cyprus negotiations this year and that he felt that there should be discussions leading to face-to-face talks. He had yet to address the substance of the approach. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Cyprus, Han Sung-Joo, was in Istanbul over the weekend. He was believed to be in Athens today and tomorrow and would be going to the Republic of Korea instead of coming to New York.

Asked if Mr. Miyet and Sir Kieran Prendergast, the designated Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, would be available to meet with correspondents, Mr. Eckhard said he would ask them upon their arrival.

Answering another question, Mr. Eckhard said that there was a tentative plan, arranged through the United States Mission, for some Congressional staffers to meet with United Nations staff today. At the last moment, however, there was another meeting called by the State Department in Washington, D.C., on United Nations reform, so the meeting at the United Nations was postponed.

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