DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Manoel de Almeida e Silva, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General:

Good afternoon. We're going to have two guests at the noon briefing today: Jan Kubis, who is the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Tajikistan. He just concluded his briefing to Security Council members.

We also have a last-minute request from the General Assembly: Ambassador Samir Shihabi of Saudi Arabia, President of the Council of former Presidents of the General Assembly. They are having their annual meeting these two days in New York and they would like to inform the press about an announcement.

**Secretary-General

The Secretary-General, as you know, is in Geneva, and today he had his high-level meeting on the Balkans. The day started with a meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata.

Following that, he met with the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Cornelio Sommaruga, who shared with the Secretary- General his impressions of his recent visit to the region.

He also met with Under-Secretary-General Sergio Vieira de Mello and his deputy, Martin Griffiths. Mr. de Mello, as you know, is the Emergency Relief Coordinator. They talked about the humanitarian needs assessment mission that is to go to Yugoslavia, hopefully this weekend.

As you'll see in the programme we have put out, originally the Secretary-General had a meeting scheduled with the Belgian Foreign Minister. That did not happen due to a problem with travel. They spoke on the phone and are to meet in person in a few days. They talked about prospective plans for reconstruction in southeastern Europe.

At midday, he met with his two Special Envoys to the Balkans -- Carl Bildt and Eduard Kukan. Following that, as they left for a private lunch, the three of them had a brief press encounter. We have upstairs in our Office the transcript of remarks to the press by both the Secretary-General and the Special Envoys.

In the afternoon, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. (Geneva time), the Secretary- General chaired the high-level meeting on the crisis in the Balkans. It was attended by a variety of heads of United Nations agencies. The list of participants is also available in our Office upstairs.

In Geneva today, there has been a series of press briefings by different heads of agencies. We are receiving the transcripts of some of these press encounters. We also have upstairs the transcript of the press briefing by Martin Griffiths, that was held right before the afternoon meeting.

There is a briefing going on by Sergio Vieira de Mello. We will be getting these transcripts and we will share them with you.

**Security Council

Here in New York, three items were scheduled to be discussed in today's Security Council consultations. We have received word that the first item on Kosovo -- which comprised a humanitarian briefing by the Secretariat and a draft resolution on the humanitarian situation -- has been postponed until 3:30 p.m. today.

The Secretary-General's Special Representative for Tajikistan, Jan Kubis, briefed Council members on the situation in that country. A draft resolution calling for an extension of the mandate of the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) for a period of six months was introduced.

The third scheduled item on this morning's Council agenda is a draft resolution on Western Sahara. The mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) expires tomorrow.

**Situation in Kosovo

Regarding Kosovo, preparations continued for the United Nations inter-agency needs assessment mission to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and aid agencies continued to bring assistance to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled Kosovo.

In a late day surge which lasted until nearly midnight, an estimated 4,000 refugees crossed the border from Kosovo into Albania. They reported recent heavy fighting between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, which subsequently urged them to leave the region because food stocks were extremely low.

In Kukes, UNHCR field staff continued an information campaign to try to persuade some of the 90,000 refugees in the town to leave the area for safer and better regions in other parts of the country.

For the eighth straight day, the border area between Kosovo and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia at Blace was practically empty.

Nearly 2,500 refugees departed under the humanitarian evacuation program from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to third countries in the

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largest departure so far in one day. UNHCR expects evacuation flights to increase in the coming weeks.

We have a UNHCR update which has more details on that.

An overview of health in the refugee camps, as well as epidemiological information on communicable diseases among refugees in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, are both now available on the Web site of the World Health Organization (WHO), at www.who.org. WHO says the health situation in the camps continues to deteriorate due to overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions. The risk of outbreaks of communicable disease is increasing.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), as part of its ongoing efforts to help children deal with the trauma they have experienced -- with the main goal of trying to create some semblance of normalcy in the children's lives -- says it is collaborating with Media Action International, a Swiss NGO, and Albania's Radio Tirana to create a regular programme for children aimed at both Kosovar refugees and Albanian nationals.

The programmes will address many issues of children's rights and concerns, including the trauma they have experienced during the conflict. UNICEF says it is distributing 3,000 wind-up radios to Albanian refugee camps. Another 2,000 radios are being distributed in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, today returned to Geneva following a tour of countries affected by the Kosovo crisis.

Speaking in Belgrade earlier today, Mrs. Robinson called on the Yugoslav Government to immediately end the "vicious human rights violations" that its army, police and paramilitary forces are accused of, and to commit itself to the unconditional and safe return of refugees and internally displaced persons.

In a meeting with Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic, she reported that the accounts of Kosovar refugees pointed to "a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out with cold-blooded determination by Government, military and security forces".

You'll find more details in a briefing note from the High Commissioner's Office upstairs. It is also my understanding that Mrs. Robinson may be having a press conference in Geneva in about an hour or so. That was to be confirmed.

**The Hague Appeal for Peace

As you know, tomorrow evening the Secretary-General will be travelling to the Netherlands, where he will deliver the closing address at The Hague

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Appeal for Peace -- an event organized by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to mark the centennial of the first Hague Peace Conference.

Speaking to participants today, Judge Louise Arbour, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, stressed the need for all countries to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The broad reach of an International Criminal Court would overcome some of the shortcomings found in the ad hoc justice of the Tribunals, she said. "And sad as they are", she continued, "the recent events in Kosovo have created an unanswerable precedent in favour of a broad-based application of international humanitarian law, enforceable before an international forum".

We have copies of her statement upstairs.

**World Health Organization and the War against Poverty

The World Health Organization (WHO) is hosting a meeting in London today aimed at giving priority to the war against poverty.

WHO Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland said the meeting would mark a concrete step in investing in health as a measure against poverty.

Participants are expected to discuss how to reduce poverty through health interventions and investments.

According to WHO, despite great health achievements over the past 50 years, more than a billion people still do not have access to basic health care.

The press release is upstairs in our Office.

**Millennium Assembly

As you know, preparations are now under way for the United Nations Millennium Assembly, which will be held next fall. As part of that event, heads of State and Government from around the world will gather for a Millennium Summit.

There's a new report of the Secretary-General on the racks today (document A/53/948) summarizing the discussions on possible themes for the Summit. Among those suggested by Member States were "new challenges to multilateralism in the age of globalization" and "the relationship between the United Nations and civil society".

In his report, the Secretary-General says that these proposals prove that the Millennium Summit will be more than merely a celebratory event.

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Instead, it should provide an opportunity for a moral recommitment to the Charter and "spur new political momentum for the international cooperation and solidarity that the peoples of the world increasingly demand".

**Announcement

Finally, an announcement from the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA): the briefing today that we announced yesterday with Ambassador Sergey Lavrov of the Russian Federation will not be at 3:15 p.m. but at 3 p.m., at the request of the Russian Mission. You are all invited.

That's all I have.

**Question-and-Answer Session

Question: The President of the Security Council ran into some objection from a permanent member about the humanitarian mission of the Non-Aligned Movement, that he tried to introduce -- China objected. So, how do we view the mission of Sergio Vieira de Mello there when the Security Council failed to adopt such a text?

Deputy Spokesman: There's two things: what is before the Council is a draft resolution of the Non-Aligned Movement, not a mission by them -- that's different. And, that's being discussed today. So, we'll know the results of that when consultations adjourn today. The mission is entirely separate from the resolution.

The Deputy Spokesman later added that the resolution before the Council does mention the mission, but the mission does not need that in order to go.

Regarding the Secretary-General's agenda for today in Geneva, I have just been informed that he'll be meeting later today with Strobe Talbott, United States Deputy Secretary of State, who will be in Geneva.

That's all I have. Thank you very much. Have a nice lunch and a good afternoon.

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