DAILY BRIEFING ON SPECIAL SESSION OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Press Briefing

DAILY BRIEFING ON SPECIAL SESSION OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Samsiah Abdul-Majid, the spokeswoman for the President of the General Assembly, briefed correspondents on the special session of the review of implementation of Agenda 21. Also taking part in the briefing was Jean-Claude Faby, Chief of the Office of the Under-Secretary-General for Policy and Coordination and Sustainable Development.

Ms. Abdul-Majid said the plenary was expected to meet at 6 p.m. today for the adoption of the report from the Committee of the Whole. Today, the plenary would hear statements from 30 speakers, and the Committee of the Whole was expected to meet at 3 this afternoon. [Later, it was announced that the plenary meeting would be at 9 p.m.]

At noon today, Ms. Abdul-Majid said, the Assembly President received a copy of the "Newcastle Declaration", which was a declaration in the form of a formal communication to the Assembly by the International Union of Local Authorities and the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives, as representatives of local governments globally. It had been adopted at Newcastle in June in a conference called Pathways to Sustainability and was presented to the Assembly President by the Minister for the Environment of Australia, Robert Hill.

The Assembly President was currently meeting with some major players in an attempt to arrive at language for the political statement, which would be adopted by the Assembly this afternoon, Ms. Abdul-Majid said.

For those correspondents following the cross-sectoral negotiations, Ms. Abdul-Majid said a one-page document showing the status of the main document was available in the Media Centre.

Mr. Faby said negotiations on the political statement had continued into the early morning today, and at 4 a.m. it was decided that negotiations on the political statement could not continue. This afternoon, the President of the General Assembly was meeting with representatives of political groups and key delegations to seek viable alternatives for the text of the political statement. One possibility was to have a much briefer document, perhaps one or one-and-a-half pages, which might serve as an introduction or preamble to the main document.

In the sectoral and cross-sectoral areas, there were still a number of paragraphs that required agreement, Mr. Faby said. Two groups were discussing these paragraphs, but no news of their progress was available at the moment. Two of the main issues of the last several days, forests and atmosphere, were also the subject of several discussions. On atmosphere, discussions were continuing, with a focus on a single paragraph proposed by Japan.

An agreement had been reached on forests, Mr. Faby said. At 11:45 this morning, a number of small, handwritten amendments were introduced to the text by the Chairperson, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Environment of the Netherlands, and were agreed upon by the group. According to these amendments, there would be an intergovernmental forum on forests established under the aegis of the Commission on Sustainable Development. The forum would have a mandate which would include: promoting and facilitating the implementation of the forest panel's proposals for action; reviewing, monitoring and reporting on progress in the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests; and considering matters left pending by the panel, namely, trade and environment in relation to forests product and services, technology and financial resources.

Mr. Faby said the sticking point had been the section which read "the forum should also identify the possible elements of, and work towards, consensus for international arrangements and mechanisms. For example, a legal binding instrument". The forum would report to the Commission on Sustainable Development in 1999, and based on that report, and depending on the decision by the eighth session of the Commission, the forum would engage in further action on establishing an intergovernmental negotiating process on new arrangements and mechanisms or legally binding instruments on all types of forests. The text would be made available to correspondents once it had been "cleaned up".

This afternoon, the Committee of the Whole would be engaged in receiving and adopting the amendments to the main document, Mr. Faby said. In addition, if negotiations were concluded successfully on the outstanding issues, reports would be made to the Committee, which would then approve the agreed upon new texts. He was uncertain about the timing of all the steps, as it would depend on the speed of the work in the Committee of the Whole, adoption of the documents and the processing of documentation.

Asked what was the status of the 0.7 per cent of gross national product (GNP) target for official development assistance (ODA, Mr. Faby said a contact group at the ministerial level had been attempting to address that issue. A text was produced by the ministers and was intended to be part of the political statement, but there had been no agreement on the proposal.

A correspondent asked what were the identifiable obstacles in the political statement. Mr. Faby said it was not up to him to interpret the political statement. Currently, attempts were being made to reduce it, and the reduction would leave a fairly general text. The Assembly President was in charge of the text, and it was impossible to comment on something that would not be ready until sometime later in the day.

A correspondent asked if Mr. Razali's spokeswoman could outline the obstacles to agreement in the text. Ms. Abdul-Majid said the negotiating

Special Session Briefing - 3 - 27 June 1997

group was currently meeting, and the matter was still under discussion. She could not comment on it right now.

How many pages did the main document contain and what percentage of them were in square brackets? a correspondent asked. Ms. Abdul-Majid said the main document had some 229 elements and 187 paragraphs, and there were only 15 paragraphs that contained square brackets.

Asked if the final documents would be available on the Internet, Ms. Abdul-Majid said "yes", but the address was quite long and would be made available later in the Media Centre.

A correspondent asked if there had been an agreement on any language on greenhouse gas reduction. Mr. Faby said the Japanese proposal that was being negotiated contained targets, but they were in the form of alternatives rather than specific numbers. That proposal was the focus of negotiations, so he could not comment on them.

Asked if the contact group on finance would continue to meet, Mr. Faby said, "No", the group would not.

How would you characterize the documents produced at the special session compared to Agenda 21? a correspondent asked. Mr. Faby said he did not want to get into matters of assessments. The Assembly President would brief correspondents at 3 p.m., and he was in a much better position to present the kind of assessment and value judgements that correspondents were seeking.

Replying to a question on the intergovernmental panel of finance, Mr. Faby said it was not on the table. "Finance was not under the microscope at the moment."

Asked if references to ODA target would be made in the main text, Mr. Faby said he had not followed discussions on finance in the main text. Correspondents should wait for the text that would be issued this afternoon.

Whatever happened to the question of aviation fuel? a correspondent asked. Mr. Faby said this morning there was an attempt by Derrick Osborne, co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, to see what could be done on that issue and the financing mechanism on desertification. He said, unfortunately, he had to leave the room before negotiations had been completed.

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