DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

**Briefing Guest -- Robert Fowler

Our guest today, as you might have just heard, will be Ambassador Robert Fowler, the Canadian Permanent Representative, who will be here in his capacity as the chairman of the Security Council's sanctions committee on Angola. He'll be talking to you about the World Diamond Congress, which took place this week in Antwerp, Belgium, and which he attended.

**Security Council

The Security Council today is holding closed consultations to discuss the Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict. That came out this morning. In it, the Secretary-General states that ultimately the best way to reduce the harm done to children is to prevent armed conflict in the first place. He also calls for the building of a “culture of prevention” as called for initially by the Security Council, in November of last year.

He goes on to say, “This will entail narrowing structural inequities and addressing the extreme poverty, practices of exclusion and manipulation of diversity that are at the root of so many of today’s conflicts”.

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, will be the guest at the noon briefing here on Monday.

Then on Wednesday, the Deputy Secretary-General will open the Council’s open debate on children and armed conflict. In addition, Mr. Otunnu will introduce the Secretary-General’s report and Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), will brief the Council. Following the open debate, the Council will hold consultations on a draft resolution on that subject.

Under other matters, the Council is now being briefed by Ambassador Robert Fowler on the World Diamond Congress. And following that, we hope to have him join us here.

**Lebanon

The United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Terje Roed Larson, will return to Lebanon over this coming weekend.

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On Monday he’s scheduled to meet with President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Selim El Hoss. He will brief them on the state of progress of the inspection of the “Line of Withdrawal” along the border with Israel. The joint inspection by the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon and Lebanese Army officers is due to be completed today. As of now, there are still two remaining technical Israeli violations which the Israeli government has agreed to rectify by the 31st of July.

In his meetings, Mr. Larson will also focus on the UN’s assistance to Lebanon in securing a successful donor process that will start with the ambassadorial conference scheduled for next Thursday.

We expect the Secretary-General’s report on the United Nations mission in Lebanon to be out by mid-afternoon today.

**Democratic Republic of the Congo

Fighting in Equateur Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has triggered a new refugee exodus to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo. Staff from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the northern Republic of Congo have received alarming reports of some 20,000 refugee arrivals in villages along the Ubangui River, villages that are still cut off from humanitarian assistance.

The fighting and presence of DRC military vessels in the region have brought traffic along the busy river to a virtual standstill. The UNHCR has appealed urgently to both Congolese governments (the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo) to safeguard humanitarian operations and facilitate the immediate travel of a barge carrying tons of desperately needed relief supplies.

The UNHCR received reports of another group of 5,000 refugees who fled last week's fighting in the Equateur towns of Dongo and Imese.

The Secretary-General's Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kamel Morjane, issued a statement this week on the ceasefire violations in Equateur province, calling on the parties to stop the fighting, a sentiment echoed in a press statement by the Security Council Wednesday evening.

**Georgia

The Secretary-General submitted today his report to the Security Council on the situation in Abkhazia, Georgia, recommending a further six-month extension of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG).

In his report, the Secretary-General says that “the results of the coordinating council session held on the 11th of July have opened the prospect for constructive engagement between the parties”. Nevertheless he stresses that, for the long term, no serious progress can be achieved without the demonstration of substantial political will from both sides.

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Following two serious security incidents, the Secretary-General also calls on both sides to guarantee the safety of the United Nations personnel on the ground.

The full text of the report is available in my office.

**Tribunal

The Appeals Chamber of the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia upheld a Bosnian Croat’s 10-year conviction today for his involvement in the rape and torture of a Bosnian Muslim woman in May of 1993 in Vitez, in Central Bosnia.

This judgement brings to a close the case of Anton Furundzija, a 31-year old former paramilitary commander who was found guilty of two counts of violations of the laws and customs of war. This is the tribunal’s first ruling in a case which deals exclusively with a single rape as a war crime.

More details on this ruling from the Tribunal are available in my office, if you're interested.

**UNHCR Briefing Notes

The UNHCR briefing notes are available upstairs as well. They contain an item on the closure of a UNHCR office in the West Timor border town following a series of security incidents aimed at obstructing the return of East Timor refugees from West Timor.

The notes also report an influx of Rwandan refugees into Tanzania.

**ECOSOC

Today the President of the Economic and Social Council, Ambassador Makarim Wibisono of Indonesia, forwarded to the Group of 8 Summit in Okinawa, Japan, the ECOSOC Ministerial Declaration on Information Technology. The Declaration, adopted at the conclusion of ECOSOC’s high-level segment a couple of weeks ago, outlines means to close the world’s digital divide.

A press release and the Declaration itself are available in our office. If you want more information, contact Tim Wall, extension 5851.

**UNDCP

With an agreement to be signed in Vienna on Monday, the Netherlands has pledged $4.3 million to the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP). That puts Netherlands just about at the top of contributors to that Programme. We have an embargoed press release with more details.

**Budget

On budget news, Mexico has become the 103rd Member State to be paid for its year 2000 regular budget dues. That's with a check for over $10 million.

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**Week Ahead

We have the week ahead for you to read. You can pick it up in my office.

**Press Conferences

And finally press conferences. One p.m. today, Marco Borsotti, who is the Humanitarian Coordinator for Georgia, will discuss the challenge of addressing internally-displaced persons' needs in Georgia.

Questions?

**Questions and Answers

**Question: There's a report that yesterday the justice minister of Sierra Leone said that having an international tribunal is not in the best interest of the people of Sierra Leone to prosecute the RUF for war crimes, and now prefers a special domestic court, citing the delays and financing and prosecution for a United Nations court. This is an apparent reversal of his previous position. Has Sierra Leone advised the United Nations of this -- the Security Council or the Secretariat? And what is your response?

**Spokesman: I'll have to check. You've caught me flat-footed on that one. So we'll try to catch up on what was said yesterday, see if that was communicated to us officially, and if we have any response. [He later responded that the report said that the Justice Minister had sent a letter on that subject to the Security Council President, not the Secretary-General. It that were true, it would be up to the Council President to respond.]

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