TALKING POINTS

Agreement in Mazar-I-Sharif
The Deputy Special Representative for political affairs, Jean Arnault, was in Mazar on 5 May along with our Military Advisor. He is in Kabul now and will be back in Mazar tomorrow. This is because following the agreement we had helped broker between General Dostum and General Atta Mohammad on 1 May, another agreement was signed by General Dostum and General Atta Mohammad. In this agreement, both Generals agreed that within 24 hours they would remove out of Mazar, all tanks, armoured personnel carriers and artillery pieces belonging to the groups. This agreement was signed the evening of 5 May. The information as of this morning is that indeed a significant number of this military equipment was moved out of Mazar. The verification continues, and for that reason, as previously agreed, Mr. Arnault and the Military Advisor will be heading back to Mazar tomorrow for a follow-up on the meeting of 5 May and in order to verify how this withdrawal of military equipment is progressing and hopefully concluded.

The military equipment is to be moved out to Char Bolak and to Marmul. The agreement also reaffirmed the establishment of a new police force of 600 men and women. It also affirmed, simultaneously with the reorganisation of the police, unauthorised posts and bases shall be withdrawn from the city of Mazar to their original positions. Both General Dostum and General Atta Mohammad also agreed that in the province of Faryab, there should be an equitable distribution of administrative posts and that will be carried out for the benefit, as the agreement says, "of the brothers of Jamiat (excepting people belonging to Malek Group)."

Gravesite Investigation in Bamiyan and Mazar-I-Sharif
The Untied Nations forensic investigation mission fielded to the areas of Bamiyan and Mazar-I-Sharif this week, completed their field investigations and returned to Kabul on Sunday, where they worked on the finalisation of the mission report, and undertook a preliminary assessment of domestic forensic capacity, before leaving the country early this morning. The team's findings and recommendations will be finalised abroad, before being submitted to the United Nations for further consideration.

The team comprised of two forensics experts accompanied by staff of UNAMA and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, examined three alleged mass gravesites, documented the parameters and characteristics of the sites, exhumed and conducted forensics examinations on a number of bodies, collected material evidence, interviewed witnesses and community representatives, handed over some remains to local communities for burial and prepared sites for appropriate follow-up. The team also collected information and prepared a list of other alleged mass gravesites in the country.

The sites are located in (1) Daoudi village, Bamiyan, (2) the Mazar-I-Sharif airport area, and (3) Sheberghan.

Update on the Loya Jirga Process
As of yesterday, there have been district assemblies in 84 districts. In these assemblies, 3,449 people have been selected of which 25 are women. These people will go to the second level where they will comprise the electoral college and through a direct ballot, will then vote who the final delegates will be for the Loya Jirga which will take place in June in Kabul. Ten districts have decided to move on and they have already conducted the direct elections of their final delegates, so we already have 23 delegates elected for the June Loya Jirga.

International Organisation for Migration (IOM) - Scaling Back Afghan Operations
IOM is to scale back its work with internally displaced people (IDPs) in Afghanistan, because of a lack of funding from international donors. Consultations are underway with partner agencies as to the nature and timing of the cut-backs.
UNAMA, through Pillar 2, is actively working with IOM and other agencies that will be affected by the scaling back of activities, and with the donors in order to attempt to find an early solution for this hopefully temporary problem.
IOM programmes providing care and maintenance in IDP camps in the west and north of the country, and programs to provide transport to help IDPs return to their villages, will be temporarily suspended pending new funding pledges.

Other IOM Afghan programs will not be affected. These include:

• The Internal Transport Network (ITN) program, operated in conjunction with UNHCR, targeting refugees returning from Iran.
• The Return of Qualified Afghans (RQA) program.
• The Community Improvement Governance Initiative (CIGI) program.

Afghan Delegation Attending the General Assembly Special Session on Children
The General Assembly Special Session on Children will take place in New York on 8-10 May.

The Afghan delegation will have five persons:

• The Minister of Justice of the Interim Administration (Abdul Rahim Karimi)
• The Deputy Minister of Women's Affairs (Tajwar Kakar)
• Kabul University Professor (Amina Hafizaly)
• Two children: 13-year-old Nadia and 14-year-old Misbahulaq.

Nadia and Misbahulaq, girl and boy, are two Kabuli children selected by the Interim Administration to attend the Special Session. They will be among some 350 child delegates to do so, whose activities include participating in the formal debates and dozens of supporting events.

Including the Afghan representatives, more than 60 heads of state or government and 170 senior-level delegations are expected to attend the Special Session, a gathering that is a follow-up to the 1990 World Summit for Children.

Update on Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) -Yusuf Hassan
Afghans continue to return in record numbers despite the difficult conditions in their homeland.
After a drop at the weekend, the pace quickened this week. On Monday 12,000 refugees repatriated home. More than 480,000 have returned home under Afghan Interim Administration-UNHCR assisted programme, which begun nine weeks ago.

Since 1 March, over 438,000 refugees have entered Afghanistan from Pakistan through the Torkham, Nawa Pass-Asadabad and the Chaman-Spin Boldak border crossings in the east.

More than 34,000 Afghans returned home mostly through Islam Qala in the north west but lately also through Zaranj in the south-west. Nearly 10,000 have repatriated from Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The returnees are provided a cash grant to cover travel expenses and a UNHCR package of relief
goods and 150 kilograms of wheat from the World Food Programme. To meet the their needs and to ensure efficient delivery of assistance in the areas of return, UNHCR has set up 14 relief distribution and encashment centres. It is expected that up to 32 centres will be set up in all the provinces in the country.

The Afghan Interim Administration and UNHCR plan to help the return of 800,000 refugees from Iran and Pakistan during 2002. Half of these were expected to return from Pakistan, however, this figure was surpassed in the first eight weeks of the repatriation programme.

In collaboration with the Ministry of Repatriation and IOM, UNHCR plans to help some 400,000 IDPs return home during the course of this year. Monday saw the return of another 965 IDPs
from the Hesar Shahi camp near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, bringing the total number of people who have returned to their towns and villages since 21 April to 9,022.

In Bamyan, UNHCR and IOM have aided over 8,200 Afghans displaced by war to return to 13 villages in the Shaidan valley.

Since December, we have assisted over 42,000 IDPs to go home. UNHCR provides an aid package of blankets, plastic sheets, jerry cans, buckets and soap to the returnees.

Food Aid Forum in Kabul - Alejandro Chicheri
Today, the World Food Programme is holding in Kabul a one-day meeting to talk about the Nutritional Situation and the Role of Food Aid in Afghanistan. Representatives of the Afghan Interim Administration, UN humanitarian agencies, NGO partners and donors have been invited to participate in the forum.

This meeting will also help inform decision-makers on the role of food aid in addressing nutritional need in Afghanistan and update them on the Food Security Situation in Afghanistan.

Other subjects on the agenda that will be discussed are: the response systems to address rapidly changing levels of vulnerability; how Food Aid can contribute to a short-term solution, and the mechanisms to receive and deal with beneficiary grievances.

Pipeline Overview
Since the end of September last year until 25 April 2002, WFP ha sent more than 430,500 tons of food to more than 9 millions impoverished Afghans who are dependent on food aid until the harvest in July. To give you an idea of this amount, if you put all this food in a single convoy you will have a column of 43,050 trucks with a length of 387 kilometres.

Question and Answers

Q: Are there any conclusions from the team on the forensic expedition? Do they call it mass graves?
Spokesman: There is no [final] report yet so I do not know what language they will be using.

Q: [Inaudible] Question on Bamiyan site.
Spokesman: On the Daoudi site, in Bamiyan, the bodies of 18 individuals were recovered. The exams indicated death of these people occurred several months to three years ago. However, all of them died prior to the onset of last winter.

Q: Are there any indications of the causes of death?
Spokesman: The remains of three individuals were recovered from a shallow grave and were subjected to an autopsy examination. The indications are that all died from gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and back. One body was found with its hands bound, indicating summary execution. Physical traits, clothing and artifacts on the bodies indicated that they were all male, of Hazara ethnicity and Shia religion, ranging in age from teenager to elderly.

Q: [Inaudible] Question on Mazar sites.
Spokesman: At the Mazar airport site, things are a little bit more complicated because the site is partially destroyed. It consists of a large trench in which bodies have been dumped. Since February, both the contents of the shallow grave and surface carcasses have been dumped into the trench by unknown persons. The result, according to the team, is a complication of the gravesite requiring a more complex investigation. They have photographed the site, drawn up details the site and recommended measures for its protection until further investigation can be undertaken.

The other site is Sheberghan which showed surface indications of the use of heavy machiney and indicated a large grave area of recent origin. The team detected sub-surface remains by probing, and then dug a small test pit. The remains of 15 bodies were encountered at a depth of 1.5 metres below the surface. They exhumed three bodies from those for autopsy; the bodies were all males, had Caucasoid features, were shoeless and shirtless, wore 'tumban' style pants, frilled waist ties and black turbans, consistent with Pashtun origin. Other observations at the site, the conditions of the bodies, absence of fly activity, indicated time of death within the past few month after the onset of last fall.

Q: [Inaudible] Question on the investigators and their nationality.
Spokesman: There were three of them. Two of them are Physicians from Human Rights, but they came for the UN. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has a roster of experts, including forensic experts who are on call, and can be called upon for situations like this. The UN does not have on its staff forensic experts, so we have brought in these two experts and the third, who also came from abroad, is an officer of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. I do not know their nationalities - we are all international civil servants.

Q: Did you say that all indicators in Bamyian pointed to the fact that the bodies dug up had been dead anywhere from six to 18 months ago?
Spokesman: Between several months to three years ago.

Q: Are there any more bodies at Shebergan?
Spokesman: There maybe more.

Q: Is it possible that there are more gravesites throughout the country?
Spokesman: We anticipate that as a result of more access by everyone to areas that were not accessible before, it is possible that we will have more allegations of gravesites being discovered. That is another thing the experts will do for us; make recommendations on how to proceed with this possible added demand. As I mentioned earlier, they were looking at the domestic forensic capacity here in Afghanistan, they did that yesterday by visiting institutions here in Kabul. [Inaudible] You will see their recommendations once they conclude their report.

Q: Is there any reason why there is no estimate of the numbers of dead bodies at Mazar?
Spokesman: The Mazar airport site does not have numbers. The Daoudi site does have numbers. The other one they only did probing, and [dug the test pit].

Q: There is reference to large gravesites, but without any numbers being quoted -- why is that?
Spokesman: Not from what I have so far, this is not their final report. This is a preliminary note which they have shared with us. I do not know if they will add to this, most likely yes, but I do not have that right now.

Q: [Inaudible] Question on dates of the mission.
Spokesman: They first went to Bamiyan on Saturday 28 April, then on the following Tuesday they went to Mazar. They came to Kabul on Sunday 5 May and left this morning.

Q: When will the report of the forensic team be finished and where will it be released?
Spokesman: I do not know.

Q: [Inaudible] Question on cause of death of Sheberghan exhumed bodies.
Spokesman: The examination of the bodies and the absence of blunt force trauma, sharp force injury or firearm injury led the team to conclude that the cause of death was consistent with death due to suffocation.

Q: Is there any indication of when the forensic team will go back to Mazar.
Spokesman: No

Q: [Inaudible] Question on role of the UN and violations of Loya Jirga procedures.
Spokesman: The rule is not by the UN, the rule is by the Commission. The Criteria and Procedures are established by the Loya Jirga Commission, an Independent Commission, and it is very clear that events like that are evidently contrary to the Criteria established by the Commission. The Commission has Commissioners and personnel throughout the country in the provinces in order to observe the process. They have the authority to suspend or interrupt proceedings if they are not going according to the procedures established and announced by the Commission back in the beginning of April.