United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-06-04

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

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Thursday, 4 June, 1998

HEADLINES

• Foreign ministers of five permanent Security Council members say they want to cooperate closely to prevent arms race in South Asia.
• At Conference on Disarmament, Iran's Foreign Minister outlines initiative to reduce tension in South Asia.
• Head of UN weapons inspectors says with Iraqi cooperation, a "very different report" could go to Security Council by October.
• New UN survey shows that Iraqis are benefiting more from medical care, but drugs are still in short supply.
• Security Council members call on political forces in Haiti to ensure continuation of democratic process.
• Refugees from Kosovo continue to arrive in Albania, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
• Clear skies enable delivery of emergency assistance to survivors of earthquake in Afghanistan.
• Narcotic crops can be eliminated or drastically reduced in a decade, says head of United Nations drug control.
• UNESCO is planning establishment of first centre for prevention of water related conflicts .
• United Nations expert appeals to Equatorial Guinea to grant clemency to 15 death-row inmates.

At the conclusion of the meeting its Chairman, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jianxuan, told reporters that the five expressed deep concern over the present situation in the South Asian region and the desire to cooperate closely in order to prevent an arms race in the area, beef up the international non-proliferation regime, and promote the peaceful settlement of the dispute between India and Pakistan.

Mr. Tang said the meeting marked the beginning of an important stage. "The five countries will continue to follow the development of the situation in the South Asian region with close attention and to make positive efforts for the realization of the involved nations' goals," he said.

Participating in addition to Mr. Tang were Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, French Foreign Minister Hubert V‚drine, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

"We will not amend the NPT [Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons], for that will send a message that every nation is free to test its way into the nuclear club," Mrs. Albright told reporters after the meeting.

The permanent five would be engaging a broader group of non- proliferation leaders, including Japan and Germany, in the coming weeks, according to the United States Secretary of State. "We are defending our principles here, not our privileges," she said.

Addressing the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Mr. Kharrazi stressed that the world should bear in mind that at least part of the blame for recent events rested on the insufficiency and insignificance of the response to demands for genuine moves on nuclear disarmament.

Iran's Foreign Minister stressed the need for a renewed commitment by India and Pakistan to resume and continue a comprehensive dialogue on all outstanding issues, including peace and security, Jammu and Kashmir, confidence building measures and nuclear issues. The latter must involve attention to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). These issues could be dealt with through a pre-arranged mechanism which included discussions at the highest possible levels, he suggested.

Mr. Kharrazi said there was also a need for a commitment to refrain from conducting any further nuclear tests for at least as long as the dialogue was under way, and a commitment to engage in immediate discussions with representatives of non-nuclear-weapon States and nuclear-weapon States which were parties to the NPT and CTBT. The two countries should also be committed to exercising maximum restraint and refraining from any action that might aggravate the situation. In particular, they should avoid the assembly or deployment of nuclear weapons and should refrain from transferring weapons-related materials.

During a briefing to the Council which lasted for a day and a half, Mr. Butler outlined all of the information which UNSCOM needed from Iraq in order to certify that it had completed all required disarmament actions. He said he would take the list to Baghdad next week to discuss it with Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz. "Some have called it a road map, so I've said that I would also need to discuss with him the driving instructions for that road map."

Mr. Butler characterized the development as a "very significant step forward," and sounded a hopeful note about next week's meetings with the Iraqi authorities. "Tariq Aziz has indicated that he is looking forward to seeing me and my team in Baghdad this week. He I'm sure will have had a full report of all of this by the time we get there, and I hope we can design the way ahead."

Mr. Butler declined to elaborate the contents of the list, but did say that it covered the main priority issues, including prohibited missiles, chemical weapons and biological weapons, with the latter raising the most unanswered questions. "Iraq has been far less revealing to us over the years with respect to its biological programme than it has with respect to chemical or missile" programmes, he said.

The UNSCOM Executive Chairman also declined to speculate about actual figures, explaining that it was "up to Iraq to tell us what the real numbers are -- we match that with the information we have." He said verifying agencies could not reveal what they knew. Rather, the subject of the verification -- in this case, Iraq -- must step forward with information of its own.

There had been a good deal of progress in other areas, he said. "We are on the edge of accounting for all special warheads" carrying chemical and biological weapons on long-range missiles. "I'm hopeful that in a few weeks from now we'll have an account of those and we can take that off the books."

During his briefing to the Council along with other members of the UNSCOM team, experts referred for the first time to the fact that in some areas, such as conventional warheads, 100 per cent verification may not be achievable, according to Mr. Butler. "The Council will at some stage have to come to grips with this," he said. "The law is written, necessarily, in fairly ideal or absolute terms. If, after a number of years, it is found that it cannot be met absolutely, then it may be that the Council will have to think about how much is acceptable in terms of that law."

Mr. Butler did not provide further details, saying "the issue of how much is enough starts to move a little out of the technical area and become a bit political, and I wont go into that."

United Nations Spokesman Eric Falt told reporters in Baghdad on Thursday that the survey shows an increase in attendance at health centres of 114 per cent over the past year in the three northern governorates. By comparison, in the 15 central and southern governorates, there was an 11 per cent increase compared with the same period in 1997. "Increased attendance generally reflects greater satisfaction," commented Mr. Falt.

The survey also showed that 50 per cent of those interviewed received the full prescribed treatment, as compared with 39 per cent in November 1997. Similarly, the percentage of patients leaving a health facility without any of the prescribed drugs dropped from 28 per cent to 15 per cent for the same period. On average, 74 per cent of patients interviewed felt there had been an increase in the availability of drugs over the last three months. However, physicians in these facilities stated that, on average, they had only 34 per cent of the drugs they needed to prescribe for the 10 most common diseases.

The study was conducted in May by the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, in conjunction with the World Health Organization and others. It covered all 18 governorates of Iraq. A total of 165 health facilities were visited, including 47 hospitals, 69 health centres with resident doctors, and 49 public and health insurance clinics. The facilities were randomly selected to cover both rural and urban areas.

Addressing the press on behalf of Council members, its President, Ambassador Antonio Monteiro of Portugal, called for elections by the end of this year, the strengthening of the civil police, and the completion of the reform of the Haitian judicial system. He told reporters that the Council reaffirmed the commitment of the international community, through the United Nations and its specialized agencies, to support the process of economic and social rebuilding of Haiti.

Haiti has been without a Prime Minister since June 1997, and with a virtually paralysed Parliament since this January. Efforts to break the deadlock have been largely unsuccessful.

According to the Secretary-General's most recent report on the situation in Haiti, the political crisis is having a destabilizing effect on the country's fledgling democracy, while also harming economic activity and jeopardizing international assistance. Haiti remains the poorest country in the western hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. Per capita income is only $250, and 80 per cent of the rural population live in poverty. The situation, far from improving, has been deteriorating over the past decade.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported from Albania that more than 6,500 arrivals have been registered as of Thursday. UNHCR said that between 8,000 and 10,000 refugees are now estimated to be in Albania.

The United Nations agency said that the influx of the refugees from Kosovo has stretched to the limits the food, accommodation and transportation resources in the Tropoja area which is the point of entry into Albania.

UNHCR field staff said that they witnessed large numbers of refugees continuing to stream down the mountain and that several of them collapsed once they reached the plateau which is a four to six hour walk from Tropoja. Some of the refugees, including a number of women and children, have suffered shrapnel wounds, the agency said. Reported deaths included two elderly people who died of exhaustion and a two year old boy who died attempting to pass a mountain crossing with his mother.

The United Nations refugee agency said that local authorities are providing as much transportation as possible to bring the refugees down the mountain and that additional resources have been rushed to the area.

On Wednesday, torrential rains flooded the airstrip in the main relief base of Faizabad forcing the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to suspend helicopter flights to the affected areas.

A United Nations Spokesman said on Thursday that between six and seven tonnes of aid was delivered to twelve villages which have been severely affected by the earthquake. Quoting field workers in Afghanistan, Spokesman Fred Eckhard pointed out, however, that the amount reaching the victims was "a drop in the bucket" when compared with the huge needs on the ground. Mr. Eckhard said that the priority is to get food to the those people who have not eaten since Saturday.

Humanitarian workers in Afghanistan are awaiting the delivery of two 20-ton cargo helicopters from the United States and are appealing for several more helicopters and aircraft that can manoeuvre through the difficult mountainous terrain, the spokesman said.

The massive earthquake in Afghanistan killed an estimated 3,500 to 5,000 people and destroyed up to 78 villages in the remote mountainous provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan. Many of the dead are believed to be children and elderly people trapped inside their mud homes. Another earthquake in the region killed approximately 4,000 people in February.

Mr. Arlacchi was speaking at a press conference on Thursday on the eve of the General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem on 8 to 10 June. Giving an overview of the special session, he said that there is unanimous consensus on the need to have a truly global strategy to fight drugs. Mr. Arlacchi identified some of the important elements on the agenda of next week's session.

For the first time, he said, the issue of demand reduction has been included on the agenda at the same level as other components of narcotics control. He pointed out that the problem of drugs includes supply and demand.

The other important aspect in tackling the global drug problem is a strategy for the elimination or drastic reduction of narcotic crops such as cannabis, opium and coca through alternative development, said Mr Arlacchi.

Mr. Pino Arlacchi also underlined the need to raise the issue of bank secrecy which facilitates money laundering by drug traffickers. According to Mr. Arlacchi, bank secrecy and the proliferation of tax havens are "an impediment to criminal investigations worldwide." Mr. Arlacchi said he was encouraged by the fact that a couple of European prime ministers have raised this issue.

World leaders who will gather in New York next week to discuss the world drug problem are expected to come up with a global strategy to fight drugs and to adopt a political declaration on this issue.

Speaking at the opening of a three-day world conference on water resources which started in Paris on Wednesday, UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor warned of the alarming problem posed by dwindling fresh water resources. "In 25 years, per capita annual water availability has dropped by about one third," he said.

Addressing about 450 participants, mostly scientists, from around the world, Mr. Mayor declared that cultural and ethical answers are needed to deal with this problem. He added that this is why water is one of the main subjects to be tackled by UNESCO's World Commission for the Ethics of Science and Technology established last year.

Mr. Mayor said that water-related conflicts can be prevented if it is recognized that water " has been one of humanity's learning grounds for community building." Therefore, he added, water should not be seen as "a potential source of conflict but rather as a source of agreements that can serve as a paradigm for the sharing of knowledge and resources essential for the transition from a culture of water to a culture of peace."

Participants in the world water forum emphasized the urgent need to improve data collection and water resources assessment in order to formulate sustainable water management policies.

The prisoners were sentenced to death by a military tribunal this week for their alleged roles in attacks on military installations in January.

Mr. Artucio appealed to President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo to commute the sentences in the interests of his country's peace and stability.

The Special Rapporteur expressed serious reservations about the proceedings in the military tribunal which, he said, did not meet international standards of due process and did not provide adequate protection for the rights of the accused. He urged the President to limit the use of military tribunals to cases involving members of the armed forces who committed military offences.

Mr Artucio visited Equatorial Guinea in March this year following the attacks in January which were blamed on insurgents. Ten people died in the incidents.

The Special Rapporteur said his appeal did not reflect on the seriousness of the acts. However, he argued that an act of clemency by the President would send a positive signal about the process of democratization and the commitment to pluralism by the authorities in Equatorial Guinea.

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

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