Despite successes, UN operations need more support.

The courage and dedication of UN peace-keepers--despite all the difficulties they face--has resulted in "enormous good" over the past year, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared on 2 September UN personnel helped bring peace--"not just the temporary absence of overt hostilities, but genuine long-term peace"--to peoples who had not known it for decades.

Cease-fires gave rise to "stronger, more responsive institutions of governance", greater respect for human rights, and the "reconstruction and rehabilitation" of devastated countries. Tens of thousands of starving people were fed, "no mean feats", the Secretary-General said. Peace-keeping operations had made possible the "beginnings of development", he stated.

In his annual report (A/49/1), the Secretary-General said that there had been 164 military fatalities in 1993 and 108 people killed in the first eight months of 1994. Those responsible must be identified and brought to justice, he stated.

The role of public information in promoting understanding and generating support for UN peace-keeping was of key importance, he continued. Among other things, that would help to ensure that the Organization's "crucial if dangerous operations draw strength from the force of public opinion, rather than be weakened by it".

Thus, some major peace-keeping problems might be better addressed, such as the increasing difficulty in finding sufficient troops and other personnel for the "most challenging operations", exacerbated by the UN's acute financial crisis, and the caution of national Governments in contributing forces in missions solely under UN control.

A multifaceted plan to enable the UN to take up a wider mission in the pursuit and preservation of world peace had been initially introduced by the Secretary-General in his 1992 "An Agenda for Peace", the Secretary-General reported. Further measures to improve the Organization's peace-keeping capacity, including stand-by arrangements, were recommended in a 14 March report on the subject.

As of 2 September, written offers of more than 31,000 troops had been made by 22 Member States, the Secretary-General reported. However, there were still "deficiencies" in the areas of communications, health services, supply, engineers and transportation.

A stand-by arrangements management unit had been created to develop and maintain an overall database and explore possibilities of participation with all remaining Member States, the Secretary-General said.

A major limiting factor in timely deployment of UN peace-keeping troops lay in the "lack of readily available equipment", the Security Council stated on 27 July, urging that such issue be addressed "both in the context of stand-by arrangements and more broadly".

In a statement by its President, Jamsheed K. A. Marker of Pakistan, the Council also reiterated the importance of improving the UN capacity for "rapid deployment and reinforcement of peace-keeping operations". While welcoming responses from some Member States, the Council noted that the commitments made so far did "not yet cover adequately the spectrum of resources required to mount and execute future peace-keeping operations".