United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-03-30

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Monday, 30 March 1998

HEADLINES

• Secretary-General tells Duma that Russian Federation is "indispensable anchor" to United Nations peace efforts.
• United Nations Secretary-General welcomes return of Prince Norodom Ranariddh to Cambodia.
• Secretary-General urges leader of Turkish Cypriot community to resume talks.
• Secretary-General reports increased air violations over Iraq- Kuwait border, but says situation generally calm.
• UN mission in Angola says last Friday's attack in Benguela Province was carried out by UNITA elements.
• United Nations Human Rights Commission condemns Israeli settlements in occupied territories.
• United Nations refugee agency urges Malaysia to stop deporting Acehnese Indonesians.
• Finland makes its troops available to United Nations peacekeeping operations on standby basis.

Addressing the Russian Duma, the Secretary-General said that if the agreement recently concluded between the United Nations and Iraq is fully implemented, it will prove that "acting united, the world can prevent conflict."

"In a world of plural interests and plural powers, we must recognize that much more can be achieved by acting together than by acting alone," he emphasized.

The Secretary-General said that over the last decade, the Russian Federation has become an "indispensable anchor" of all that the United Nations seeks to achieve in the area of peace and security.

The Secretary-General paid tribute to Russian soldiers serving courageously both in United Nations peacekeeping operations worldwide and under Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) auspices. He noted that Russia currently contributed more that 1,000 troops, police officers and observers to operations in Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Georgia, Western Sahara, the Middle East and along the Iraq-Kuwait border.

In a statement issued by his spokesman on Monday, the Secretary- General said that the return was the result of many months of efforts led by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Troika and the Friends of Cambodia, supported by the United Nations to help Cambodia find a satisfactory solution to its political crisis.

The Secretary-General said it was hoped that the return of the Prince, who had been accompanied, among others, by the Secretary- General's Special Representative in Cambodia, Mr. Lakhan Lal Mehrotra, would assist in the holding of free and fair elections scheduled for July.

Secretary-General Annan noted that while the return of Prince Ranariddh was a significant step forward, much work still remained to be done to ensure that the elections fully did justice to both the terms of the Paris Agreements and the gains made during the period of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and since.

Following their meeting on Saturday in Geneva, the Secretary- General, through his Spokesman, stressed that talks between the leaders of the two communities are the only framework within which both are treated on the basis of full political equality. He said he would ask his Special Envoy, Diego Cordovez, to continue to explore with the parties ways of establishing fair and effective modalities for the continuation of the talks. "He is concerned that, otherwise, there is a real risk that the situation in the area will deteriorate, and that tension will increase," the Spokesman said.

The Secretary-General emphasized that "there is no alternative route to a peaceful settlement based on a bi-communal, bi-zonal federal state with full political equality between the two communities."

The Secretary-General expressed his disappointment at the outcome of Mr. Cordovez's recent visit to Nicosia, particularly that it was not possible to find a common basis on which to continue the process of negotiations between the leaders of the two communities, according to the UN Spokesman.

During the meeting, Mr. Denktash gave the Secretary-General a "full and frank account" of his position and concerns. At Mr. Denktash's request, the Secretary-General will be informing the Security Council of the outcome of their meeting.

According to the Spokesman, the Secretary-General is encouraged that Mr. Denktash has reiterated his continued support for the former's good offices, and his wish for a peaceful settlement of the Cyprus problem.

In a new report to the Security Council on the United Nations Iraq- Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM), issued Monday, the Secretary-General says that in the past six months, there have been 179 air violations, up from 49 during the previous six-month period. Most of the aircraft flew too high to be identified, but on 29 occasions they were identified as aircraft used by the coalition forces in the region, although nationalities could not be confirmed.

Still, the Secretary-General observed that "UNIKOM continued to contribute to the maintenance of calm and stability in the demilitarized zone." The Mission received the cooperation of the Iraqi and Kuwaiti authorities, he added.

The Secretary-General also reports on two serious incidents. On 20 November 1997, firing at a UNIKOM position from the Iraqi side seriously wounded a United Nations military observer and damaged property. Neither the motive nor the identity of the attackers could be found. The second incident involved the hijacking at gunpoint of a UNIKOM patrol vehicle, also on the Iraqi side of the demilitarized zone on 18 February. The identity of the hijackers remains unknown.

According to the report, UNIKOM destroyed a total of 1,882 devices, including mines, rockets and artillery rounds. "Unexploded mines and bomblets inside the demilitarized zone, mostly on the Iraqi side, continued to cause casualties, some of them fatal, to civilians living and working in the area," the Secretary-General states.

According to a United Nations spokesman, the attack in the Benguela Province had been launched by approximately 100 armed men in civilian clothes. Two people were killed and three others were injured in that attack. Vehicles belonging to MONUA and the World Food Programme, were damaged during the attack, the United Nations spokesman said. Spokesman Juan Carlos Brandt said that by Monday Angolan Government forces had regained control of Chongoroi which was reported to be calm.

Meanwhile, the Joint Commission, which is chaired by the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, and composed of representatives of the Angolan Government and UNITA, and the three observer states, (Portugal, Russian Federation and United States), was considering the state of implementation of the last phase of the 1994 Lusaka Protocol to be completed by 31 March, Mr. Brandt said.

Remaining tasks in the Angolan peace process include the completion of the extension of state administration throughout Angola, the transformation of UNITA's Radio Vorgan into a non-partisan broadcast facility, the establishment of the UNITA leadership in Luanda, and the integration of Dr. Jonas Savimbi's 400 personal bodyguards into the National Police. In addition, there has to be the demobilization of 1,500 UNITA residual forces and the disarmament of the civilian population.

Voting on a number of measures, the Commission called on Israel to immediately stop wounding and killing Palestinians, detaining thousands of them without trial, and confiscating Palestinian lands. It further expressed grave concern at the illegal expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied Arab territories, and called upon Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. The Commission also called on Israel to cease the illegal imposition of its laws, jurisdiction, and administration on the Syrian Golan and to desist from changing the area's physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and legal status.

The Commission also strongly condemned all acts of terrorism, calling upon all parties not to allow any such acts to negatively affect the ongoing peace process.

Reacting to the measures, Yosef Lamdan, the observer for Israel, said the texts of the resolutions ritually adopted at the Commission had this year gone from bad to worse, a reflection of the fact that there was no way that Israel could get a fair hearing.

Nancy Rubin, the representative of the United States -- the only Commission member to vote against the resolutions on the situation in the occupied territories -- said it was not for the Commission to interfere with or prejudge what Israel and the Palestinian Authority would do in their peace negotiations.

For his part, the observer for Palestine, Nabil Ramlawi, said the Secretary- General had told Israel two days ago that it must cease taking United Nations resolutions so lightly. The resolutions were based on the principle of land-for-peace, a principle the Israeli Government rejected, he added.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Saturday that it had been approached by a number of Acehnese Indonesians seeking refugee status. UNHCR said that their asylum requests should be heard.

"We are very worried, since genuine refugees in need of international protection may well be among those sent back by Malaysia", said Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The United Nations refugee agency repeated its call for access to detention centres in Malaysia which are believed to be holding thousands of Indonesian illegal immigrants. According to UNHCR, approximately 500 of the detainees may be refugees and asylum seekers from Aceh. "I regret that our repeated requests for access to the detention centres have not been granted, " Mrs. Ogata said.

According to UNHCR, at least nine people died last week during riots in several detention centres in Malaysia, sparked off by a decision of the Malaysian authorities to deport large numbers of illegal immigrants to Indonesia.

Formalizing its commitment, Finland and the United Nations concluded a "memorandum of understanding" on Monday. The agreement was signed by the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Bernard Miyet, and Finland's Minister of Defence, Anneli Taina.

Other countries which have signed the memorandum include Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Denmark, Ghana, Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Singapore, Ukraine and Uruguay.

The standby arrangements were created in 1994 to accelerate the deployment of a new peacekeeping operation and to rapidly enhance the capacity of an existing mission. So far, some 67 countries have expressed their willingness to participate in the arrangements.



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