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 are hoping to have as our guest Alvaro de Soto who is in the Security Council. If he finishes there on time, he will brief you on East Timor here. Otherwise, that briefing would be at the stakeout.

**Kosovo

The newly-appointed Special Representative for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, met with the Secretary-General in Geneva earlier today to review the responsibilities of his mission. The envoy told reporters afterwards that he should be Kosovo-bound early next week, Monday or Tuesday, to take over what he described as "a very heavy and a very difficult task" from the acting Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello.

We have available the transcript from their joint press conference in Geneva.

Mr. Kouchner will be in New York from Wednesday until the end of the week for consultations.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported today that refugee returns had topped 600,000. Organized returns from Montenegro were expected to start Wednesday. Arrangements are being worked out to start the first voluntary repatriation movements from Europe and other areas to which Albanians were evacuated during the crisis. Around 91,000 refugees were flown to third countries from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, who led a convoy of 190 returning refugees from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia into Kosovo on Monday, today was scheduled to visit a school in Kosovo Polje outside Pristina, where some 5,000 members of the minority Roma population have sought refuge. The Roma people have been accused of collaborating with Serbs during the conflict and many have been targets of violence as a result of these accusations.

In Prizren, she met with a KFOR German general who spoke of the need for the early return of teachers, doctors and other professionals. The general also spoke of the need for a police force. The KFOR has been guarding prisons and arresting obvious looters and other criminals.

As part of the United Nations process of re-establishing an independent, impartial and multi-ethnic judicial system in Kosovo, Sergio Vieira de Mello on Monday issued a statement on the right of KFOR to apprehend and detain

persons suspected of having committed offenses against public safety and order. The statement will permit KFOR to hold individuals for a longer period of time than is allowed in the national laws observed by some contingents until pre-trial hearings can be held and a legal determination made on whether and how long a prisoner should remain in custody. The recently appointed team of judges and prosecutors, meanwhile, have begun pre-trial hearings in three areas -- Pec, Prizren and Gniljane.

Also today, the first United Nations flight arrived at Pristina airport carrying a load of communications equipment from Brindisi following the landing of the first Russian flight.

The joint civil commissions on reintegration issues at Pristina University and in the health care sector took place today. Details are not yet available.

And, an attempt to set up production teams in Albanian and Serbian languages to get Radio Pristina back on air with limited programming ran aground today when Albanian representatives rejected the proposal and indicated that they would be unwilling to join Serbs on a joint civil commission on the media. A team of media experts of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is due in Pristina on Thursday to assess the situation.

**International Court of Justice

Late Friday, we received word that Croatia has brought proceedings against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the International Court of Justice for violations of the Convention against Genocide in the early nineties.

We have press releases in both French and English with details.

**Secretary-General in Geneva

The Secretary-General arrived in Geneva from New York on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, he opened the annual meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). ECOSOC President, Francesco Paolo Fulci, in preliminary remarks said of global poverty, "Enough is enough. The rich are getting richer while the number of poor continues to rise".

In his statement, the Secretary-General said that the cost of universal access to basic social services would be $40 billion a year. That is about what people in the developed world spend every year on cigarettes and one- third of what developing countries spend on the military.

After opening the meeting, there was a high-level dialogue involving Michel Camdessus of the International Monetary Fund, James Wolfensohn of the

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World Bank, Rubens Ricupero of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and David Hartright, Director-in-Charge of the World Trade Organization.

In the early afternoon, the Secretary-General addressed a conference marking the closure of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. The Secretary-General then addressed a meeting of the International Chamber of Commerce which he had convened to review progress on the business initiative he launched at Davos, Switzerland in January this year.

He asked the business representatives to implement his Davos Global Compact encouraging good corporate citizenship in the area of human rights, the environment and core labour standards.

Following the meeting, he addressed the press.

We have the speeches he made and the transcript of his press encounters available in the Spokesman's Office.

This morning, the Secretary-General addressed a mixed audience of delegates and children at what he called a birthday party to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He said, "Children's rights can no longer be seen as optional. Respecting them is not an act of charity, it is a binding obligation".

Then, he met with Bernard Kouchner and, for part of the meeting, Carl Bildt, one of the Secretary-General's Special Envoys for the Balkans, was also present. After that meeting, they had a press encounter. We have the transcript of that press conference upstairs.

Following that, he met with United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson. They discussed her recent visit to the Russian Federation and, among other things, the human rights situation in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. The Secretary-General also met with Eduard Koukan, his other Special Envoy for the Balkans. He left for Dakar and is expected to arrive in Senegal later this evening to start a five-day trip to countries in West Africa.

**Iraq

Some of you may have seen some media reports on Iraq involving a citizen of New Zealand. The information we have from the Office of the Iraq Programme is that by 10 a.m. today the Humanitarian Coordinator, Hans von Sponeck was called to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs where he was given a note verbale demanding the departure, within 72 hours, of someone by the name of Ian Broughton, a New Zealand national employed by the company contracted by the

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United Nations to provide demining services in the three northern governorates of Iraq.

The United Nations has begun an investigation of the allegations made in the note verbale regarding the planting of boxes near a village in the north. Mr. Von Sponeck will meet tomorrow with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to review the situation.

**East Timor

As I mentioned, Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Alvaro de Soto, is briefing Council members, under other matters, on East Timor. This is related to the events on Sunday afternoon when a convoy of vehicles returning from a humanitarian mission to assist internally displaced persons in the region of Liquica was attacked by militia. The convoy consisted of representatives of local non-governmental organizations and was accompanied by the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) Humanitarian Affairs Officer and a local representative of the UNHCR.

More details on that incident, as well a transcript of a press conference held in Dili by the Secretary-General's Special Representative, Ian Martin, are available in our office. A note issued by UNAMET on 4 July regarding this incident is also available.

**Security Council Consultations

The Security Council is discussing the Secretary-General's report on Guinea-Bissau. Then, under other matters, in addition to East Timor, they are also expected to discuss the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

**International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia

Louise Arbour, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), welcomed the detention by SFOR of Radislav Brdjanin, charged of crimes against humanity. He is alleged to be responsible, in concert with others, for the major ethnic cleansing operations conducted in the Sanski Most and Prijedor regions in 1992.

The text of her statement is available in the Spokesman's Office.

**United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

The UNHCR tells us that the first arrival of Congolese refugees in Gabon was reported this weekend with around 1,500 Congolese crossing into three provinces along a 1,000 kilometre stretch of the border apparently pushed out by the ongoing fighting and unrest in Congo (Brazzaville). Gabon becomes the second country to receive refugees from Congo-Brazzaville since rival forces reopened the conflict in late 1998.

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**New UNHCR Deputy High Commissioner

Frederick Barton, a Director of the United States Agency for International Development, has been appointed Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees. Mr. Barton, 49, takes over from Gerald Walzer, who retired in May after a distinguished 40-year career with the UNHCR.

**Youth Programme

This morning, Gillian Sorensen, Assistant-Secretary-General for External Relations, addressed 400 students from 50 countries and gave them an overview of the work of the United Nations. The students, all of them delegates from the Congressional Youth Leadership Council, also heard a panel presentation by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Tomorrow, they will participate in a model United Nations type session, here in Headquarters.

This whole programme is organized by the Department of Public Information. The Congressional Youth Leadership Council is a Washington-based NGO dedicated to "fostering and inspiring young people to achieve their full leadership potential".

**World Health Organization (WHO)

The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced a major new offensive aimed at ridding the world of polio by the end of 2000.

This will require massive vaccination campaigns over the next few months. One of the targeted countries is Angola, where over 3 million children will be vaccinated in a campaign funded partly by De Beers, the diamond mining company.

You can read more in a press release available in our office.

**Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

We have in our office a press release from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on new standards it has set for foods derived from biotechnology as well as guidelines for organic foods.

**Payments

Chile became the eightieth Member State to fulfil its 1999 budget obligations today by paying over $1,300,000.

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**Press Briefing

Our guest at the noon briefing tomorrow will be Kevin Kennedy, Chief of the Emergency Liaison Branch of the Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs. He has just returned from the Solomon Islands where he led an assessment mission.

**Question and Answer Session

Question: Is Mr. de Mello expected to return from Kosovo immediately?

Deputy Spokesman: I have no date, but, yes he is expected to return.

Question: Is the De Beers funding of the polio campaign in Angola an unusual relationship or is it part of the new effort to get corporations involved? Deputy Spokesman: I do not have the details. I haven't read the press release myself. But, it's certainly new that the private sector has taken this kind of initiative and supporting role.

Question: Is your office aware that there is an advertisement on the New York metrocard for a coffee break with an image of the Secretary-General? Was this officially approved? If not, what is your reaction?

Deputy Spokesman: I haven't seen it. I will look at it and come back with a reaction.

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