I have the honour to convey the attached communication, dated 4 December 2000, which I have received from the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

I should be grateful if you would bring it to the attention of the members of the Security Council.

(Signed) Kofi A. Annan

Annex

Letter dated 4 December 2000 from the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization addressed to the Secretary-General

By Dragutin Hedl in Zagreb

European leaders gathering in Zagreb last week for the historic European Union, EU, Balkan summit were determinedly upbeat. French President Jacques Chirac said the summit "completed the reconciliation of our continent" started ten years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The summit, which brought together the heads of state and government leaders of the 15 EU member states, Croatia,

A team of five World Vision aid workers returned from Serbia today reporting on horrendous living conditions in collective centres for displaced people. The team spent a week visiting collective centres for displaced people from Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia. Many of them have been living in inhumane conditions for five to nine years.

In Krucevac, former capital of Serbia, one of the city's kindergarten now serves as shelter for 235 people. On entering the centre one is overwhelmed by the humidity and inherent smell

By Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Old Guard Balkan politicians, who used ethnic hatred to galvanize supporters and wage bloody wars in the early 1990s, are giving way to less nationalist successors. The result for Bosnia is change - even growing ethnic tolerance - that was unthinkable in wartime.

The death of Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman in December paved the way for a moderate, pro-West regime that since January

Child rights continued to be compromised in 2000 in Southeastern Europe, an area affected by repression, violence, displacement and economic recession. Simultaneously, the political situation

Three IOM charter flights are transporting over 700 Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees from Conakry to the United States. The refugees are being resettled in the United States under the US Refugee Resettlement Programme (USRP). The first IOM charter flight to leave Conakry this month will arrive this morning, 6:00AM local time, in New York's John F. Kennedy Airport with 213 refugees onboard.

Under the US Resettlement Programme, IOM normally transports the refugees on commercial flights, but this groups'