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, and Susan Markham, Spokeswoman for the President of the General Assembly.

Briefing by Spokesman for Secretary-General

Let me present Sue Markham to you as the Spokeswoman for the President of the Fifty-fifth General Assembly. She is known to many of you, of course, from her work in DPI and we have managed to find a little extra office space in my office where she will spend as much time as she can. She will be briefing you after I do; I will brief you and take questions, and then we’ll go to Sue as we’ve done in the past.

**Thank You NY

The Secretary-General thanked New Yorkers for their "courtesy, understanding and support" during last week's Millennium Summit by ordering that the words "Thank You NY" be displayed on both sides of the building over the weekend and that would happen again tonight.

We understand that in addition to being covered on a number of local radio and television stations, the message was also displayed on the marquee at Madison Square Garden, the scoreboard at Shea Stadium, outside the US Tennis Centre at Forest Hills and on the Astro-vision screen in Times Square.

And we understand that the blimp that will be flying over the Monday Night Football game at the Meadowlands tonight may make a pass by the United Nations building to view the message of thanks.

The Secretary-General also sent letters of appreciation to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and copies of those letters are available for you in my office.

And then at a little celebration on the 38th floor late on Friday night, the Secretary-General told his staff to enjoy their weekend, "because Monday morning we begin implementation”. In fact, the Deputy Secretary-General, who has been tasked with following up on the Summit Declaration, began forming an implementation panel this morning.

**SG Opens Meeting on Sierra Leone

Shortly after 9:30 a.m. today, the Secretary-General opened the first meeting of the coordination mechanism between the United Nations, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Government of Sierra Leone.

In his opening remarks, the Secretary-General flagged his concern about reports of tensions on the border between Liberia and Guinea. He said he hoped that ECOWAS will do all it can to prevent any deterioration in the situation, which could have an adverse effect on Sierra Leone. Saying that the humanitarian situation has already reached deplorable levels, he pledged to do

Daily Press Briefing - 2 - 11 September 2000

whatever he can to help calm the situation. We expect to have a separate statement attributable to the Spokesman on this subject.

At the meeting, which he described as another opportunity to review the progress that has been made and set out priorities for the future, the Secretary-General expressed his relief over the rescue of the six British military personnel and one Sierra Leone army officer.

Referring to the resolution on Sierra Leone that would expand the force level of this United Nations mission to up to 20,500 -- which the Security Council is meeting on now to consider -- the Secretary-General said he hoped that the resolution will give a new impetus to the search for a solution to the conflict. We’ve just been informed that the resolution will be going into blue later today –- that is final form -- and the Council is expected to vote on it on Friday of this week.

We have available for you upstairs the Secretary-General’s opening remarks to the ECOWAS meeting, as well as the program of work and the list of participants.

The situation on the ground remains calm, but is described also as unpredictable.

In Guinea, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) visited Sierra Leonian refugees in Conakry who had been rounded up by the police over the weekend. The UNHCR officials were screening them to determine the refugee status of those rounded up. The UNHCR has asked the Guinean authorities to protect those genuine refugees and appealed to the refugees to respect the law of the land.

**Security Council

The Security Council will have its monthly working luncheon with the Secretary-General today.

Council members are holding consultations, as we mentioned, on Sierra Leone this morning. Under other matters, the Council is expected to review their programme of work for the month of September and to discuss the mission, which they decided late on Friday evening to send to Indonesia and East Timor.

The Council President announced the decision to send a mission during the formal meeting held Friday evening, which was adopted as resolution 1319 (2000). The modalities, terms of reference and composition of the team are still to be decided.

For the record: late Friday evening the Council unanimously adopted a resolution, which condemns the brutal murder of three UNHCR personnel killed in Atambua, West Timor, on 6 September by a militia-led mob. They called the act against unarmed international staff outrageous and contemptible.

Through the resolution, the Council insisted “that the Government of Indonesia take immediate steps, in fulfillment of its responsibilities, to disarm and disband the militia immediately, restore law and order in the affected areas in West Timor, ensure safety and security in the refugee camps and for humanitarian workers, and to prevent cross-border incursions into East Timor”. The resolution also stressed that those responsible for the attacks on international personnel in West and East Timor be brought to justice.

**SG Addresses UNDP Executive Board

The Secretary-General this morning delivered the keynote address to a Ministerial Meeting of the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in which he told the Ministers of the nations that sit on that Board that the agency needs their support at a time of radical reform.

From now on, he said, UNDP's projects would be intended to "try out something new, or, by showing what a given approach can achieve, to convince others that it is worth investing in”. He noted that in many countries where the UNDP works, people are saying that such advice and help is precisely what they need.

He also noted, as did the recent report on United Nations peace operations, that the UNDP has considerable "untapped potential" to pursue in post-conflict peace-building.

The Secretary-General's speech is available upstairs. Following this address, UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown provided the Ministers with a presentation on how the agency can work as a catalyst for community-level projects in developing nations and as a global advocate for poverty eradication. The meeting then went into a discussion of UNDP reform and how to position the agency to deal with the challenges of the modern world.

The Ministers are here to review UNDP's reform efforts in recent months, and to discuss how to rebuild political will for the agency. The meeting is closed to the press, but there will be a press briefing by Mark Malloch Brown at 5 p.m. in this room to fill you in on what happened today in that meeting.

The Executive Board of UNDP and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) will proceed to meet throughout this week, although the special Ministerial Meeting ends today.

**Cyprus Talks Resume Tomorrow

Tomorrow here at United Nations Headquarters, the latest round of the Cyprus proximity talks will open with the Secretary-General meeting with both delegations separately. At 3 p.m., he will meet with His Excellency Glafcos Clerides and his delegation and then at 4 p.m. he will meet with His Excellency Rauf Denktash and his party. The Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, will speak to the press at some point after the talks have resumed. We will keep you updated on the exact time and date.

**Iraq

From the Iraq Programme, the Secretary-General’s latest report on the implementation of the “oil-for-food” programme is out on the racks today. This is the 90-day report for Phase Eight, which began on 9 June. The report has a different style relative to its predecessors. It simply summarizes the situation in the different humanitarian sectors and highlights areas of achievements and areas where problems still need to be solved.

One problem area is the Government of Iraq’s refusal to discuss arrangements for using oil-for-food funds to purchase Iraqi goods and services and to give visas to United Nations experts on this issue. The Government has also indicated that it does not intend to cooperate with the independent experts appointed to report on the humanitarian situation in Iraq.

More positively, the International Telecommunications Union has opened offices in Baghdad and Irbil in anticipation of the start of activities in the telecommunications sector. Similarly, two senior housing consultants visited Iraq in July in preparation for implementation of the housing sector. For any questions on that, I direct you to John Mills over at the Iraq Programme.

**SG to Speak at Church

This afternoon, between 5 and 6 p.m., the Secretary-General and his wife, Nane, will attend a prayer service at the Holy Family Church, just around the corner, which is the traditional prayer to open the yearly General Assembly Plenary. The Secretary-General will deliver some brief remarks at that service and we hope to make available to you in the course of the afternoon.

**UNEP

We have three items from the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP).

The first concerns a UNEP awards ceremony to be held this evening at the Park Avenue Atrium to announce the prize-winners in the third UNEP-Canon International Photographic Competition on the Environment. All the major prize- winners, who hail from Germany, Brazil, China and Canada, will be in attendance. The exhibition will run through Friday, 22 September, and then begin a worldwide tour.

The second release concerns an environmental impact assessment mission being sent this week to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the following week to Albania. The UNEP team will assess the environmental impact of the Kosovo conflict and the capacity of both countries to address pollution sources and the seriously contaminated sites that may require urgent attention.

The final release deals with the opening this morning in Dublin of a Global Conference on Access to Environmental Information.

So for all of those three things, see the press releases in my office.

** Press Conferences

Finally, press conferences today. In this room in just a few minutes, actually at 12:30 p.m., Ambassador Paul Heinbecker who is Chairman of the Angola Sanctions Committee of the Security Council, Mr. Juan Larrain of Chile, the Chairman of the Angola Monitoring Mechanism of the Council, and finally, Mr. Martin Chungong Ayafor of Cameroon, Chairman of the Panel of Experts on Sierra Leone. They will all be here to discuss the role of diamonds in fuelling conflicts.

And then at 2:30 this afternoon, Harri Holkeri of Finland, the President of the Fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly will meet you and brief you. I’ll take your questions and then we’ll go to Sue.

**Questions and Answers

Question: Fred, do you have any comment on the stories in both the Guardian of London and the Washington Post on a memo from General Jetley complaining that the Nigerians in UNAMSIL and that the Special Representative are involved in diamond trading, alleging this.

Spokesman: The information on the diamond trading we have nothing further on what we have seen in the press. The problems within the leadership of the mission have been well-known to the Secretary-General for some time. He did send General Manfred Eisele, former Assistant Secretary-General in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, to Sierra Leone in late May and early June to assess those problems. He sent letters to the leaders telling them what he expected of them -– to resolve their differences and work more closely together. In light of this latest information, I think he has been consulting with a number of Member States at the highest levels and he is expected to make some decisions soon.

Question: Can I follow up quickly.

Spokesman: Yes.

Question: There is a report that the Nigerians have asked for Jetley to be replaced. Is this in the hopper.

Spokesman: I don’t want to say what the Secretary-General will announce as his decision, but just that one is forthcoming.

Question: Would you care to describe to us the climate in which the Cyprus proximity talks are due to resume today and could you give some details of Mr. de Soto’s consultations over the next day or so concerning Cyprus.

Spokesman: The news blackout on these talks continues. Mr. de Soto will speak to you eventually, mostly about, I assume procedural matters. I think if we didn’t feel that there was a chance progress could be made we wouldn’t keep plugging away at these talks, although we have no illusions about the complexity of the issues. The effort in recent times has been to get beyond the procedural issues into the substance. And the Secretary-General has said that he hopes this time they will begin discussing the core issues.

Question: About this intervention of the Secretary-General about the substantive talks, what forms will his decisive action take so that the talks will finally enter the negotiations phase.

Spokesman: Well, the parties cannot be forced to discuss something they are not willing to discuss and I think the process thus far has been to try to bring them to a point where they feel they have agreed on the procedural issues and are now both ready to get down to substance. Whether that will actually happen or not you will have to hear from Mr. de Soto when he comes to talk to you.

Question: Can you give us, Fred, an idea how long the Sierra Leonian talks this morning are going? Is it just today or does it go through the week? Spokesman: Honestly, I don’t know off the top of my head. I think this ECOWAS meeting is just one day. Let me double-check that and get back to you later. [He responded later that it was a one-day meeting.]

Question: Again Sierra Leone, according to the handout, it does end today with a final report. Will that final report be published or is that going to be an internal document?

Spokesman: A report on Sierra Leone?

Question: No, a report on this ECOWAS/United Nations meeting.

Spokesman: And what is your question?

Question: Is that report an internal document or are we going to be able to get it?

Spokesman: I will have to check on that for you too.

Question: Second of all, the Secretary-General’s report on the Special Court, is that going to be handed over to the Security Council tomorrow?

Spokesman: I understand that the Secretariat has asked for a slight extension. I don’t have that firm for you and I will have to get back to you on it, but my understanding is that that report now will not be sent to the Council as scheduled tomorrow.

Question: Will it be sent this week?

Spokesman: I don’t know for how long we will be asking an extension. I was not able to get to the Legal Adviser this morning. As soon as I get an answer from them, I will share it with you. I will squawk it.

Question: You said that the Deputy Secretary-General has set up an implementation unit to implement the Millennium Declaration.

Spokesman: Yes. Governments have committed themselves to specific targets, ones initially proposed by the Secretary-General.

Question: I think I heard him saying that when he sent the Brahimi report to the Security Council he said in his covering letter that he would ask the Deputy Secretary-General to produce an implementation panel for that report before the Summit. Is that correct?

Spokesman: Yes. She’s got her hands full.

Question: So there are two implementation panels.

Spokesman: Yes.

Question: And any idea when we are likely to see the fruit of that panel?

Spokesman: Well, the Summit goals take us to 2015/2020 for the various objectives regarding poverty, the spread of HIV/AIDS, equal access to education for girls and boys, and so on. But to reach those goals, work will have to be

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done in the short term and it is governments, he made clear, that will have to work with the United Nations, the private sector and others to get things moving. And money will have to be spent for specific objectives to be achieved. So, the Deputy Secretary-General will be monitoring that effort over the next year.

On the Brahimi Report, I think it really is up to the governments -- how they will like to see implementation. One permanent member of the Security Council said to the press that he would like to see that report implemented within a year. I think that would probably be welcomed by the Secretary-General.

Briefing by Spokeswoman for Assembly President

The follow-up to the Millennium Summit is one of the crucial issues facing the General Assembly. A clear signal was given from the Summit that the task of the Assembly should be to follow-up. The President of the Assembly, Harri Holkeri of Finland, will give some pointers on how that follow-up would work at a press conference at 2:30 p.m. today. The press conference will be his first since he was elected last Tuesday.

This morning, the General Assembly was deciding on its agenda. There are currently 179 items on the agenda, including a few new ones from last year. The Assembly was also deciding on which items it would look at in the plenary and which ones would go to the Committees. Each of the committees would meet later and decide on its own agenda. At that point, the Office of the Spokeswoman will be able to give journalists a list of when major issues would be discussed in each committee.

The general debate will start tomorrow and end on Friday next week. A list of the speakers is available in the briefing room. That list should be checked against the Journal each day for changes. There had already been some changes for tomorrow.

In response to a question asked last Friday concerning why Brazil and the United States always spoke before the first speaker in the general debate, the position of Brazil dated back to the tenth General Assembly when there had been a difficulty in getting any Member State to speak first. Brazil had volunteered and since then had always been the first speaker. The second speaker was, of course, the representative of the host government, the United States.

The President’s schedule is available in the Office of the Spokesman. News highlights of each day will be put up on the Web site and will also be made available to correspondents. It will not be necessary for me to be at every noon briefing, but I will be available if correspondents need me or if there is something important that journalists need to know.

Correspondents are welcome to come and see me if they need help with the General Assembly. Correspondents can also get help from my assistant, Minna Kaihovirta, who will be working with me for the remainder of this year. The Office of the Spokeswoman has an e-mail address: gaspokesperson@un.org and a web site: un.org/ga/president.

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