United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-03-24

United Nations Daily Highlights Directory - Previous Article - Next Article

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tuesday, 24 March 1998

HEADLINES

• Meeting with Secretary-General, Israeli Prime Minister says he will seek withdrawal from Lebanon.
• United Nations withdraws all international staff from Kandahar, Afghanistan following acts of violence.
• United Nations Commission on Human Rights condemns "excessive and brutal" use of force in Kosovo.
• Diplomats arrive in Baghdad to prepare for inspections of eight presidential sites.
• United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs approves draft political declaration on global drug control.
• United Nations organizes workshop in Manila on organized crime and corruption.
• High-level officials from Asia-Pacific countries meet in Bangkok to discuss population issues.
• Controversy marks debate in United Nations Commission on Human Rights over issue of capital punishment.
• Marking TB Day, World Health Organization urges renewed commitment to fighting tuberculosis.
• World Health Organization works to minimize the dangers of chemicals.
• UN Food and Agricultural Organization says Madagascar faces worst locust threat in forty years.

This is in accordance with Security Council resolution 425 (1978), which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanese territory.

The Secretary-General also met for more than an hour with Israel's Defence Minister, during which they discussed southern Lebanon and the Middle East peace process, according to a United Nations spokesman. The spokesman added that the Secretary-General was also scheduled to meet with the families of Israeli soldiers missing in action.

In the morning, the Secretary-General had concluded his visit to Gaza with a meeting of senior Palestinian officials followed by a visit to the Jabaliya refugee camp administered by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). He and his party had then travelled to Israel by road, crossing at the Erez checkpoint. At midday, he had met with Israeli President, Ezer Weizman. Their meeting was followed by a luncheon hosted by the President that the Secretary-General had described as extremely cordial.

Under-Secretary-General Sergio Viera de Mello said that he deeply regretted the factors which led to this decision and the impact it would have on meeting urgent humanitarian needs of the Afghan people in the region.

Mr. de Mello said that he and his staff were awaiting written assurances from the Taliban authorities that international law and principles would be respected.

According to a United Nations spokesman, the withdrawal of the United Nations staff from Kandahar was prompted by a violent incident on Monday involving the region's Governor. Spokesman Juan Carlos Brandt said that the violence included "the slapping in the face of a UN staff member in full view of other UN staff members" by the Governor. "This assault is the latest in what seems to be a serious pattern of harassment and violent behaviour against the UN staff in Kandahar." He added that other incidents had involved throwing objects in people's faces.

Two United Nations officials flew to the region on Tuesday to raise the issue with the authorities.

In a statement issued in Geneva on Tuesday by its Chairman, Ambassador Jacob Selebi of South Africa, the Commission expressed deep concern at the recent outbreak of violence in Kosovo. It deplored the death of a large number of civilians, including women, children and the elderly.

The Commission reiterated its call on the authorities in Belgrade to cease violations of human rights and to take urgent steps to protect and promote internationally accepted standards of human rights in the province. It stressed that government authorities had "a clear duty" to protect the rights of all citizens and to ensure that public security forces act with restraint and in full respect of internationally agreed norms and standards.

The Commission also condemned "terrorism in all its forms and from any quarter" and denounced all acts of violence, including by Kosovo Albanian groups. It called on the leaders of the Kosovo Albanian community to make clear their total rejection of terrorism.

The Commission urged the Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the leadership of the Kosovo Albanian community to start a genuine dialogue to find a peaceful solution to their dispute. Such a solution, the Commission said, should take into account the rights of the Kosovo Albanians and others who live in Kosovo, and should be consistent with the territorial integrity of the country.

The Commission also expressed support for the 12 March statement by Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in which she called on Belgrade authorities to cooperate fully with her requests. She had requested, in particular, that the authorities facilitate the deployment of additional human rights officers in Kosovo and agree to the establishment of an office of the High Commissioner in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

They will join two other diplomats who are already in Baghdad, as part of the Special Group which will accompany inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during the inspections of the presidential sites.

Meanwhile, UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler and the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz concluded on Tuesday their discussions in Baghdad.

According to a United Nations spokesman, the talks were conducted in a spirit of cooperation which has appeared since the United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan and Mr. Aziz signed the Memorandum of Understanding on 23 February. The agreement ended the standoff over weapons inspections in Iraq.

Mr. Butler and Mr. Aziz discussed the speeding up of the inspection process in order to close the file on the issues of chemical weapons and missiles. They agreed to hold new technical evaluation meetings on chemical weapons and on missiles. Regarding biological weapons, the two men agreed to await the results of the ongoing technical evaluation meeting in Vienna.

Ambassador Butler, who is scheduled to leave Iraq on Thursday, indicated that UNSCOM would continue full inspections in Iraq and expressed satisfaction with the recent inspection of the Iraqi Department of Defense by a team led by Scott Ritter.

The draft, which contains clearly defined target dates for achieving its stated goals, will be submitted to the General Assembly's upcoming special session on international drug control, to be held in New York from 8 - 10 June.

"This will be the first time that the problem of demand reduction will be addressed by the international community in the context of a comprehensive drug control strategy," said Pino Arlacchi, the Executive Director of the Vienna-based United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP). In addition for mandating demand reduction, the strategy includes alternative development initiatives as well as a concrete plan for the eradication of illicit drug crops.

Mr. Arlacchi stressed that the special session should be a turning point for the world to go forward with renewed energy on drug control. He cited a number of reasons for optimism, including a politically more cooperative international climate, sophisticated technologies such as satellite monitoring systems, and the accumulated knowledge of the international community in drug control activities.

If adopted by participants at the special session in June, the draft declaration would represent a forceful, high-level commitment to fighting all elements of the drug problem on both the national and international levels. The Declaration sets 2003 as the target date for national action to stem the tide of illegal abuse and trafficking in amphetamine-type stimulants, adopt legislation on money-laundering, promote judicial cooperation, and implement new demand reduction strategies. Also by that year, States would undertake to eliminate or significantly reduce illicit drug cultivation and to reduce the manufacture and trafficking of psychotropic substances.

The Commission -- the United Nation's principal policy-making body on drug control -- approved the plan on Friday in its capacity as the preparatory body for the special session.

The meeting, which began on Monday, is the third in a series of regional workshops organized by the Vienna-based United Nations Centre for International Crime Prevention. The series aims to combat a rapid increase in global crime, including the illicit trafficking in firearms, drugs, motor vehicles and human beings as well as corruption, money-laundering and transnational economic crimes.

"Our research confirms that the level of organized crime is increasing in many countries around the world, including the Asia-Pacific region," said Pino Arlacchi, Executive Director of the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention. "Even more alarming, organized crime is becoming more diversified and establishing global networks," he added.

Delegates at the workshop will give input and regional views on a new treaty that would strengthen global cooperation against transnational organized crime.

With organized crime now reaching new heights of sophistication, the meeting will also focus on technical cooperation, especially for countries needing outside expertise to draft new laws and strengthen their criminal justice systems.

The Manila meeting follows a 1994 Naples declaration of political willingness to join forces in the fight against organized transnational crime which led to regional meetings in Buenos Aires in 1995 and Dakar in 1997.

Opening the forum, Mr. Bhichai Rattakul, Deputy Prime Minister of the Royal Thai Government, called on Asia-Pacific countries to renew their commitment to attain the goals of sustainable development and improve the quality of life of their people. "By focusing more on people, our governments are moving away from the narrow concerns of achieving impersonal 'birth control targets' towards the more positive and broader target-free 'family planning and reproductive health' considerations," the Thai Deputy Prime Minister said.

In her keynote address to the meeting, Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), stressed that population and development policies and strategies were especially important in the light of Asia's rapidly changing macro-economic environment. She said it was important to make sure that economic problems and consequent retrenchments in public spending did not weaken social investments in health and basic education.

The Bangkok conference will, among other things, review and identify the constraints and critical challenges in implementing the recommendations contained in the Programme of Action adopted by the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) and the Bali Declaration adopted by the Fourth Asian and Pacific Population Conference (Bali, 1992).

The forum is organized jointly by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and UNFPA. It is the first in a series of regional United Nations meetings to be organized around the world in preparation for a "Cairo Plus Five" conference, scheduled to be convened in 1999.

Switzerland's representative, Jean-Daniel Vigny, said the death penalty had never been proven to reduce crime rates, and its irreversible nature meant that innocent people risked execution and were, in fact, executed. Abolition of the death penalty was also supported by the representatives of Uruguay, the Russian Federation and Brazil.

Countering this view, the representative of Singapore, See Chak Mun, said that although the death penalty had been characterized as a human rights issue in the context of the convicted prisoner's right to life, this had to be balanced with the security of the victims of the most serious crimes. Singapore's experience showed that the death penalty safeguarded the interests of the society as a whole by helping to maintain law and order, an important precondition for the preservation of human dignity and the enjoyment of other human rights, he said.

Swaziland's representative, Moses M. Dlamini, agreed that the death penalty served to protect innocent people by discouraging criminals from taking the lives of others.

The debate took place as the Geneva-based Commission was discussing international covenants on human rights, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Second Optional Protocol to that treaty aims at the abolition of the death penalty.

World TB Day, traditionally observed on 24 March, commemorates the day in 1882 when Robert Koch announced his discovery of the TB bacillus.

The United Nations health agency said that in some countries, there had been little improvement in TB control programmes since it declared tuberculosis a global emergency in 1993. WHO said that by 2020, 70 million more people would die from TB if control was not strengthened.

"Too much time and too many lives have been lost to the TB epidemic," said Dr. Arata Kochi, Director of the WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme. He said that global targets would not now be met and TB control had stalled in key countries around the world.

Dr. Kochi blamed the lack of progress in combatting TB on "limited and poorly funded" efforts to apply the proven strategy known as the Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS). Under the strategy, trained medical workers or volunteers observe patients swallowing the correct dosage of anti-TB medicines and document that the patients have been cured. At the same time, the WHO official said that the DOTS strategy was showing "astounding success" in parts of the world where it was being used.

"This is no longer a technical issue," Dr. Kochi said, adding that conquering TB needed political will backed with finances to control the epidemic.

According to WHO, the population groups most affected by chemicals are poor, illiterate people with little or no access to training or information on the risks posed by chemicals. Women, infant and children are generally more susceptible to the dangers of chemicals.

In order to address these problems, WHO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are implementing an international programme of chemical safety. Their work involves conducting toxicological evaluations of food additives and contaminants. International "chemical safety cards" providing information for workers who handle chemicals have been produced in several languages for some 1,300 chemicals.

FAO said its experts in the south of Madagascar reported heavy infestation of the African migratory locust, with large swarms expected to move north towards the country's irrigated farmland.

Working in consultation with government authorities, FAO is coordinating assistance to Madagascar, including the provision of five fixed-wing aircraft and pesticides.

Earlier this year, FAO launched an international appeal for $12 million to fight the locust threat. Response to the appeal has been positive, with more than $8 million pledged so far. Although there is a substantial national and international effort under way, FAO warns that it may take several years to control the plague. In the immediate future, emphasis is being placed on protecting crops.

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

United Nations Daily Highlights Directory - Previous Article - Next Article