DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR THE 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

**Secretary-General in Strasbourg

Among the Secretary-General’s meetings before leaving Geneva for Strasbourg this morning was one with Carl Bildt, his Special Envoy to the Balkans, with whom he discussed the political situation in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Later in the day, in Strasbourg, he conferred with his other Special Envoy, Eduard Kukan.

Before leaving for the airport -- that is, still in Geneva -- he had a brief meeting with the Geneva Ambassadors of three members of the Arab League -- Algeria, Jordan and the representative of the Palestinian Authority -- who asked to see him on the turbulent situation in the Middle East.

At a press encounter in Strasbourg, regarding the current Middle East crisis, the Secretary-General said that the first priority should be “to stop the violence which has hurt so many civilians, including children”. “This is a tragic situation”, he added.

Asked whether President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should step down, he responded, “Looking at the results, it appears that the people have asked for political change. Their choice must be respected. ... The people have spoken.” The transcript of that press encounter is available in my office.

Most of his time in Strasbourg was spent in meetings with officials of the European Union, discussing peacekeeping and election monitoring issues. He proposed that the Council of Europe open a liaison office with the United Nations to further facilitate cooperation.

A complete report of the day's activities will be available in my office shortly.

**Peacekeepers Killed in East Timor

This afternoon, in the district of Same, in East Timor, an Alouette helicopter carrying five Portuguese peacekeepers crashed, killing two of them. The three survivors appear not to have been seriously hurt. They include the pilot, and they have been evacuated to Dili Military Hospital for treatment.

The cause of the crash is not yet known.

**Security Council

The Security Council held consultations until nearly midnight last night on the recent violence in the Middle East, but adjourned without going into a formal meeting. The Council is expected to return to the topic under "other matters" this morning, with the possibility of a formal meeting this afternoon.

The Council's emergency consultations on the Middle East began Monday evening after 6:00, when Under-Secretary-General Kieran Prendergast briefed the Council on the latest situation.

While emphasizing that the United Nations could not monitor events firsthand, he noted the violence that erupted following Ariel Sharon's visit to Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, including reports of excessive use of force by Israel.

The Secretary-General has been in contact with both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to urge them to defuse tensions, and Special Envoy Terje Roed Larsen is maintaining high-level contacts with the parties to calm the situation on the ground.

After hearing Prendergast’s briefing, the Council debated having a formal meeting and issuing a Presidential Statement at the end of it. There is still no agreement on the text of a draft Presidential Statement or on the holding of a formal meeting, but a number of nations -- 29 by yesterday night -- had expressed their desire to participate in a public debate on the issue.

The Council this morning began its work with consultations on the programme of work for the month of October, and then it then went into consultations on Sierra Leone.

**Sierra Leone

The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, in his first briefing to the Security Council, gave an overview of recent developments in Sierra Leone to update the Council members and to facilitate the preparation of the Council mission, which is due to leave for the region on Saturday. The 10-member mission, led by Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom, is expected to travel to Guinea, Liberia, Mali and possibly Nigeria as well as Sierra Leone.

Following Guéhenno’s briefing, the new United Nations Military Adviser, Major-General Timothy Ford, presented the Council with the military concept of operations for the United Nations mission in Sierra Leone, including the possible impact of the phased withdrawal of the Indian contingent.

On the ground, the situation remained calm in the country. But the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported renewed rebel attacks in southeastern Guinea near the border with Sierra Leone. The UNHCR raised concerns over anti-refugee public declarations, such as the one Monday by Guinea's President Lansana Conté, blaming refugees for a number of problems such as crime, arms and drug smuggling. Some refugees from Guinea are reported to have returned to Sierra Leone, and the UNHCR office in Freetown has recorded several thousand returns around Lungi and Port Loko.

Meanwhile, the Secretary-General's report on the Special Court is still not out as a document and may not come out by the end of today.

**Iraq

Today in Iraq, a Moroccan plane carrying humanitarian supplies landed in Baghdad, after the Security Council's Sanctions Committee met on Monday and approved the flight. Morocco, which is the third Arab country to have flown into Iraq in recent weeks, notified the Committee over the weekend and delayed sending the flight until the Committee met yesterday.

In other Iraq news, we have the latest weekly update on the “oil-for-food” programme, which shows that the Sanctions Committee has now put $2.14 billion dollars worth of contracts on hold. That figure represents a sharp jump from last week, and represents 14.5 per cent of the value of all the contracts that have been circulated to the Committee.

Iraq, meanwhile, exported 15.1 million barrels of oil last week, for an estimated revenue of around $367 million. This brings the total revenue for Phase Eight to $5.8 billion.

We have the text of the “oil-for-food” report available in my office.

**Secretary-General on China Mine Explosion

The Secretary-General today sent a letter to the Government of China expressing his condolences over the loss of life following the mine explosion in Guizhou Province. You can pick up the text of that letter in my office.

**Press Releases and reports

Press releases and reports out today. The report of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women is on the racks.

Also available is a press release from the World Health Organization, with remarks made by Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland at a meeting of organizations involved in the fight against diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The “diseases of poverty”, I think she calls them.

**IFAD Exhibition

Tomorrow, Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, will open an exhibition of photographs entitled “Ending Rural Poverty”. The exhibition, sponsored by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), will run from 4 to 31 October and it will be in the south corner of the Public Lobby. There is a press release.

**World Space Week

An event to launch the first World Space Week will be held tomorrow at 10 a.m. in Conference Room 4. The event will highlight opportunities presented by space technology for addressing such issues as security, health, and access to information in developing countries.

Under-Secretary-General for Public Information Kensaku Hogen will deliver a message, on the Secretary-General's behalf, on how the power of technology can be harnessed to benefit all humanity.

Among the events scheduled for tomorrow, Lou Dobbs, Chief Executive Officer of SPACE.com and former CNN anchor, will moderate a panel of space explorers from India, Romania, United States and the European Space Agency. We have a press release on the racks with more information.

**Disarmament Video

A video which was to have been screened today, in a launch sponsored by the Public Information and Disarmament Departments, will now be shown instead two weeks from now. The video, “Armed to the Teeth”, is a 55-minute documentary on the small arms crisis, and it will now be screened on 16 October at 5:30 p.m. in Conference Room 4. Media are invited to attend.

**Budget

Budgetary notes: Two more nations have paid their dues in full to the United Nations regular budget for this year. They are Algeria, which paid more than $874,000, and Dominica, which paid just over $35,000. There are now 133 Member States paid in full for this year for the regular budget.

And our guest at the noon briefing tomorrow will be Randolph Kent, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, who will talk about the assistance that the United Nations is providing to the new transitional government.

Any questions, before we go to Sue?

**Questions and Answers

Question: Is Israel among the 29 countries wanting to participate in the Security Council public debate?

Spokesman: We might have a list in the office; I don't have it here. Okay, Sue.

Briefing by Spokeswoman for Assembly President

Thank you. The President continues today with meetings he has been holding over the past few weeks with key players in the work of the General Assembly. You would have noted from his daily appointments schedule -- that we make available in the Spokesman's office -- that he meets regularly with the Chairs of all the Main Committees, both individually and collectively, and with many others who facilitate the Assembly's work. I don’t announce the schedule here every day because it takes so much time. But we do post it on the President's web site, and we also give a synopsis every day of what he has been doing and discussing at these meetings. So you can check that on .

At his meetings, the President is focusing on a number of priority issues, the most important being follow-up to the Summit. Here, the President has been emphasizing that the follow-up must be comprehensive, in other words, it must include all the issues in the Summit Declaration and not just some of them. For example, in his meeting with all the Committee Chairs last week, they discussed how reference to the Summit could be mainstreamed into the work of all the Committees. And, in case you have forgotten what the Summit Declaration says, I am pleased to announce that the Department of Public Information has issued a little booklet containing the Declaration, and we have copies here and more copies upstairs. The booklet is coming out in more languages shortly.

In addition to the President's schedule today, he is meeting with Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Secretary-General's Special Representative in East Timor, for Mr. de Mello to brief the President about the situation in East Timor. That's at 2:45 p.m. The President has a special interest in this complex peace operation and the related issues of the safety of United Nations personnel.

Of course, the President is also closely following the work of the Committees. As you know, the Fifth Committee this morning took up the issue of the scale of assessments for peacekeeping operations. And this afternoon, the Committee will meet for informal consultations. Tomorrow, it will again discuss the scale of assessments for the regular budget.

The First Committee continues its general debate on disarmament this afternoon and will continue tomorrow afternoon.

The Second Committee this morning heard from the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Nitin Desai. Mr. Desai highlighted the serious disparities under globalization, including absolute poverty, and challenged the Second Committee to address the concerns raised by the current backlash against globalization. The general debate then continued in the Second Committee. There was a very lively exchange of questions and answers and exchange of views with Mr. Desai after he spoke. The Committee will not meet tomorrow, but it will conclude its general debate on Thursday.

The Third Committee is not meeting today.

The Fourth Committee is meeting on issues relating to Non-Self-Governing Territories. I just wanted to say, although the Committees don't meet, of course you are well aware that there are many informal discussions going on. Some of them are listed in the Journal, and you will see that some of these are quite crucial issues. There are informals -- for instance, on Friday -- on the small arms conference and the preparations for that. And there are other informals on AIDS this afternoon, and other conference preparations. So if there is any interest, some are listed and I can give you information about the upcoming informals.

Any questions for Sue?

**Questions and answers

Question: In the Fifth Committee, is the question of the drop of the assessments of the United States military expenses for peacekeeping being taken up?

Answer: Yes, the whole question of scale of assessment, the whole issue related to how they determine the scale of assessments, is being discussed right now.

Question: And what is the United States saying?

Answer: I don't know if they spoke this morning, I have not followed it this morning in detail. They spoke yesterday; it is in the press release about the Fifth Committee meeting. I don't know if they spoke this morning, I am sorry. I will get the list for you, though.

Anything else? Thank you very much. Thank you.

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