TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN AT UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, ON 4 DECEMBER

Press Release
SG/SM/6417

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN AT UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, ON 4 DECEMBER

SECRETARY-GENERAL: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I want this morning to introduce Klaus Topfer, who is going to be the new head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He is a very experienced man and very well known in environmental circles, having been a former Minister for the Environment in Germany, a Chairman of the Commission on Sustainable Development, and also recently Minister for Reconstruction and Urban Planning in Germany and the man who has been responsible for moving the Government from Bonn to Berlin. So, he comes to us with considerable experience, and I expect that, with his presence, we will re-energize the United Nations activities in the environmental area.

I would also want to pay tribute to Elizabeth Dowdeswell, who leaves us at the end of the year and has occupied that post for the past five years. I want to welcome Mr. Topfer, who you will be seeing quite a bit of. Klaus, maybe you want to say a few words to our friends here.

MR. TOPFER: Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, it is, of course, a great honour and challenge for me to be elected as Executive Director of UNEP. I am determined to do my very best to make this decision a success. After more than 10 years as a Federal Minister in Germany, as mentioned, more than seven years as Environment Minister and until now responsible for construction for housing, it was not a very easy decision, but I am heartily convinced that it is the right decision to go in this new possibility. Also, I have to pay tribute to Elizabeth Dowdeswell. She did a very good job, and I hope I can do my very best to do the same in the future.

I am convinced that the United Nations can and must exercise political leadership in global environmental diplomacy. I intend to form UNEP into an organization that can provide that leadership. UNEP needs more concentration on key strategic fields and on coordination of environmental policy, and to use the synergies from its organization and programmes. Therefore, I am to the utmost convinced that the decision to do it in very close cooperation with the other institutions linked with the environment is very useful.

I believe that economic instruments must be used to harmonize the globalization of the market with the globalization of environmental policy. Being an economist by profession, I really believe it is a very good precondition to use those market instruments to overcome bottlenecks of environmental policy. We are looking for win-win strategies wherever possible to integrate industry and the economic development urgently needed for the developing countries.

Sustainable development was the result of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio. I had the honour to be the head of the German delegation in Rio and in Istanbul at the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) meeting too. That may be

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a very good precondition to have all the works done in Nairobi, where UNEP and the Habitat Centre are.

Altogether, I am determined to do my very best to prove right the decision and Your Excellency's offer to give me the chance to develop environmental and organizational policies in the world, and I hope that all the colleagues from the media will give me a fair chance to prove that we want to make some progress in this important field. I cannot mention that now. There is a lot to do combined with the Kyoto meeting. I look back to when I was the Chairman of the Commission on Sustainable Development in 1993-1994. So, there are some interrelations, and maybe some good preconditions for the years to come. Thank you very much.

SECRETARY-GENERAL: Thank you. They may have a couple of questions for you. I know they would want to move on to other things, but they should focus on you for awhile.

QUESTION: We take advantage of the kind presence of the Secretary- General to ask other questions, so my question ...

FRED ECKHARD, Spokesman for the Secretary-General: Can we start with any questions on the environment, and we will move on from there.

QUESTION: Since you have so much experience in moving the German Government from Bonn to Berlin, do you think you will move UNEP from Nairobi to Bonn?

MR. TOPFER: No, I am absolutely convinced that there is intensive need to stabilize one location in Nairobi. That is the only United Nations location in Africa. Africa needs urgently this signal that it is integrated in the United Nations family, so I want to do my utmost to stabilize this position and this location. As a matter of fact, the preconditions right now are not so very, very good, looking at the financial situation, preconditions, so there is a lot to do, but not to move.

QUESTION: What happened to the German idea to have a world environment organization based in Bonn? Is that dead now?

MR. TOPFER: No, it is not my intention. My intention is to stabilize the location in Nairobi. As I mentioned, I really believe that there must be a coordination role too. Combine this Under-Secretary-General and the Executive Director of UNEP to coordinate the environmental policy. We have a lot of other institutions. If you look in this direction, better coordination seems to me very urgent, but I do not believe there is a need for a world environmental organization.

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SECRETARY-GENERAL: And besides, he will be here to implement United Nations policy, not any other policy.

QUESTION: What do you think was responsible for the deterioration in UNEP's reputation and loss of confidence by donors, and what do you think you can do to turn that around?

MR. TOPFER: It is not very helpful to look back and to ask what are and were the reasons for a development. Here you have an analysis of the status. I was asked by the Secretary-General to give a paper integrating all the knowledge in Nairobi with regard to UNEP and Habitat. I did it, and I really believe there is an interrelation between the financial administration, political and intellectual development. You have to cut this vicious circle. That is the most important thing to do.

SECRETARY-GENERAL: I think the other thing I would hope Mr. Topfer will do for us is to work with us in really coordinating all United Nations environmental efforts. We have all these centres -- Climate Change in Bonn, Biodiversity in Ottawa -- and we really need to get them working together as a system and as a team. I would hope that, as we move forward in the next year or so, that will become clearer.

QUESTION: At the Kyoto talks at the moment, the United States is pushing the idea that all nations, including the developing countries, should share in the responsibility of cutting the emission of greenhouse gases, whereas the developing nations say they are not responsible for the current situation and, therefore, they should not be required to meet the same sorts of targets as the industrialized world. I wonder where you come down in this debate.

MR. TOPFER: To repeat, it is not very helpful, being elected yesterday, to intervene in the ongoing negotiation in Kyoto from this desk in New York. Of course, I have long experience. As I mentioned, I was at the centre of the Rio process; I was a little responsible for the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for the Climate Change Convention. So, I have some experience, but it is not very helpful to intervene here.

I hope, and I cross my fingers, that they come to a good ongoing process in this field. I think the preconditions are not very strong, but there is hope that this can be. I believe that the United Nations system must have something like a broker role in the ongoing organization after Kyoto and other fields as well, so you need a strong voice in this field. Maybe this can be also, with the help of the Secretary-General, that we can coordinate and be a well-received voice in this game.

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QUESTION: Mr. Secretary-General, you will be going to the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Tehran. What will be your main message on Iraq to the participants in the Islamic summit? What is it in fact to the Security Council, and what expectations do you have of the visit of the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission monitoring the disarmament of Iraq, Richard Butler, to Baghdad?

SECRETARY-GENERAL: Yes, I will be going to the Islamic Conference, but I will not be going to the Conference with a message on Iraq. I will be talking to the Conference about the cooperation between the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the United Nations. Of course, I will touch on trouble spots which are of concern to the two organizations, and that would include Iraq. But I am not going to put any specific proposals before the Islamic Conference.

This morning I briefed the Security Council on the "oil-for-food" scheme and discussed the report that we have put before it. I indicated to the Council that it is essential that we look at all aspects of the scheme and try to streamline it, improve it and let it run more efficiently and effectively. This will require looking at how the Security Council Committee established by resolution 661 (1990) to monitor the sanctions imposed on Iraq works. It will require looking at procurement, shipment, distribution, approval, the banking arrangements, and all that. It will also require looking at some of the infrastructure needs in Baghdad -- or Iraq, rather -- which have impact on the humanitarian situation. Here I am talking of water supplies, sanitation, refrigeration, and so forth. There are certain related issues and conditions which undermine the efforts. We will need to look at all this in its entirety before we proceed any further.

I did offer the Council a supplementary report, which I will give to them at the end of January. That report would also include the question of resources and the adequacy of it. I indicated I did not think the current resources were sufficient, but it did not help to take a piecemeal approach and throw money at the problem. We need to analyse it and move forward aggressively and comprehensively to deal with it.

I know there have been rumours floating that I had agreed to recommend $4 billion or $3 billion. I don't know where it started; I had never had any such intention because I realized the complexity of the problem and the fact that we needed to take a look at it comprehensively, but we didn't have to wait for 180 days or 90 days to do it. That is why I am going to give a report in January. I know these figures -- $3 billion, $4 billion -- have been floating around, but it never came from me. Probably, it was pushed by those who believe in the importance or the impact of whispers and rumours, but it was not a decision by the Secretary-General.

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Mr. Butler's visit -- I would hope that when he gets to Baghdad he will be able to have frank and constructive discussions with the Iraqi authorities and that some of the difficulties confronting the operations could be eliminated. I know we have had a tense relationship with the Iraqis in the last couple of weeks, but the issue is important. The Iraqis, as they say, would want to see light at the end of the tunnel, and the only way to get that done is to cooperate fully with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), for us to complete our work as quickly as we can, and for the Council to be able to make the determination that Iraq is free of arms and not a threat to its neighbours and lift the sanctions.

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