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

Briefing by Deputy Spokesman for Secretary-General

**Guest at Noon Briefing

Good afternoon. It's good to be back and to inform you first that the guest at the noon briefing today will be Olara Otunnu, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict. He will talk to you about his third annual report to the General Assembly, as well as progress achieved in protecting the rights and welfare of children in armed conflict since he took office in 1997.

**Secretary-General's Trip to Middle East

The Secretary-General this morning met again with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for about half an hour. He then consulted with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, before travelling by helicopter to Gaza for another meeting with Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian Authority.

He continued his discussions with President Arafat over lunch. While in Gaza, the Secretary-General had telephone conversations with French President Jacques Chirac, United Kingdom Foreign Minister Robin Cook and United States President Bill Clinton, among other leaders.

He continues to build international support for a formula, not yet accepted fully by both sides, for reducing tensions.

The Secretary-General postponed a planned visit to Beirut in Lebanon, originally scheduled for today, to pursue his efforts with the Israelis and the Palestinians. He will return this evening and continue to stay in touch with the parties.

**Commission on Human Rights Special Session

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson today welcomed the convening of a special session of the Commission on Human Rights to discuss the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories in the context of the recent violence.

The special session will be convened at 10 a.m. next Wednesday, 18 October, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, and it is not to last more than three days.

Yesterday, we informed you that a quorum within the Commission on Human Rights had agreed to hold the special session. In fact, 48 out of 53 States members of the Commission supported the convening of the special session.

This will be the fifth special session of the Commission on Human Rights.

Daily Press Briefing - 2 - 11 October 2000

**Sierra Leone

News now from Sierra Leone. The 11 members of the Security Council mission to West Africa spent a second day reviewing the United Nations peacekeeping operation on the ground in Sierra Leone.

Today, the entire delegation travelled to Lungi, just north of Freetown, where the Kenyan, Bangladesh and Zambian contingents, backed by a Russian attack helicopter unit, are defending the capital of Sierra Leone from their positions.

After visiting a site where former soldiers are disarmed and demobilized, the delegation moved on to a camp housing hundreds of former child soldiers.

Fourteen-year-old Al Haj Baba Sewane, who arrived at the camp nine months ago after spending three years in the jungles in northern Sierra Leone, made a simple and direct plea to the members of the Security Council to exclude children from prosecution by the proposed special court of Sierra Leone.

The teenager said, "We have been forcefully involved in a war we benefited nothing from. We are pleading as victims that you please involve us in the peace process, and absolutely exclude us from the proposed special court."

Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom, who is leading the Council mission, swiftly responded to the boy's appeal, saying that no child regarded as a victim of the war, even if he had been fighting, would be taken to the proposed special court. Only those bearing the greatest responsibility for abuses would be liable for indictment.

Discussions with military, political and civil society leaders of Sierra Leone were planned for the rest of today and Thursday morning, as well as a review session of the staff of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone.

Tomorrow, the Council mission plans to hold a press conference before flying to Bamako, Mali, via Conakry, Guinea, to meet with President Lansana Conté.

**Security Council

There is no meeting of the Security Council scheduled for today. The Council had intended to hold consultations on Angola, but it has not yet received copies of the Secretary-General's latest report on developments in that country. That report was still being finalized yesterday, and we hope it will go to the Council today.

We'll keep you posted on that.

Tomorrow, the Council expects to hold consultations in the morning on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Council members last week received copies of a draft resolution on the extension of the United Nations Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Council is expecting to hold a formal meeting to consider that draft on Friday.

Also tomorrow, the Council intends to hold a private meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab in the afternoon, in order to discuss the situation in East Timor and in West Timor. **East Timor

And from East Timor, we are informed that a warrant for the arrest of Eurico Guterres, leader of the East Timorese Aitarak militia group, was submitted simultaneously to the head of the Indonesian diplomatic mission in Dili and to the Indonesian Attorney-General in Jakarta yesterday afternoon.

The arrest warrant, the first to be issued in connection with last year's violence, was signed on 6 October by an investigating judge of the Special Panel for Serious Criminal Offences at the District Court of Dili, and relates to Guterres’ involvement in two 1999 massacres in Liquica and in Dili.

More details can be found in the briefing notes sent from Dili.

**Kosovo

The Secretary-General's Special Representative for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, today told a meeting of the Kosovo Transitional Council about his visit yesterday to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where he met President Boris Trajkovski and other senior officials.

During his trip, Mr. Kouchner discussed economic cooperation between the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Kosovo, along with railroads and air communications, improvement of border crossing facilities and the situation in the region, including the recent developments in Belgrade.

On that last topic, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo clarified today that Mr. Kouchner is willing to go to Belgrade to meet President Vojislav Kostunica once he is formally invited to do so.

Further details can be found in the briefing notes from Pristina.

**Afghanistan

Moving to Afghanistan. Yesterday in that country, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other United Nations agencies, along with non-governmental organizations, began activities throughout the country to immunize children from polio during the National Immunization Days, which last from 10 to 12 October. Another round will be held between 13 and 15 November.

During that time, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance have given their commitment to respect a ceasefire, so that a target figure of 5.3 million children can be immunized against polio.

More details in the weekly humanitarian update from Afghanistan, which is available in our Office upstairs.

**Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has issued a situation report on Belize in the wake of floods caused by Hurricane Keith. Extensive flooding still continues with some access roads under six to seven feet of water. The Government of Belize has issued a preliminary list of emergency supplies, and the Pan-American Health Organization is in the process of assessing medical needs.

More information can be found on the OCHA Web site, ReliefWeb, with the details of the report.

**International Day for Disaster Reduction

Today, the second Wednesday in October, is International Day for Disaster Reduction.

In his message on the occasion of the International Day, the Secretary- General called on the international community to "take the tools and technologies already developed in universities and research centres in various parts of the world, and apply them to the world's vulnerable communities". He also referred to women and young people as a "powerful force for change" who could assist in providing "technocratic solutions" to the communities that needed them the most.

The statement is available upstairs.

**Making Strides against Breast Cancer

The Secretary-General and his wife, Nane, are once again scheduled to join the United Nations team in the Making Strides against Breast Cancer walk in Central Park this coming Sunday, 15 October. Staff, Missions and the press have been invited to participate by walking, collecting contributions or buying T-shirts.

The United Nations Team will meet that morning at 9 o’clock on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street. It is not too late to join this worthwhile cause.

Mrs. Annan will participate in the walk and the Secretary-General will accompany her if circumstances permit.

For more information, contact Head Nurse Erna Croney at extension 3-4070 or nurse Minerva Medina at 3-1153

**Budget

With a contribution of over $536,000, Oman has become the 136th Member State to pay their regular budget assessment for the year 2000.

**World Chronicle

The Department of Public Information (DPI) asked us to inform you that the World Chronicle programme with Roberto Lenton, Director of the Sustainable Energy Division at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), will be shown today on in-house television channels 3 or 31 at 3:30 p.m.

**Press Conference

Press conference: for tomorrow, at 1 p.m., Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, newly appointed Executive Director of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), will be giving her first press conference here at Headquarters. She

will talk to you about the work of Habitat and its programme called "Cities without Slums".

She will also be launching the "Least Developed Countries 2000" report, prepared by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Copies of the report, which is embargoed until 6 p.m. New York time tomorrow, may be obtained from Yasmin Padamsee of the DPI at extension 3-7704.

**UNCA Briefing

My last announcement is a reminder from the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) that there will be a briefing tomorrow, Thursday, at 2:45 p.m., by Ambassador of Japan Yukio Satoh on the United Nations and Security Council reforms.

Do you have any questions before we move on?

If none, should we go to Sue briefly, then we have our guest.

Briefing by Spokeswoman for President of General Assembly

The message of the President of the General Assembly on today's International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction praises the United Nations focus on prevention, education and youth. Copies of it are available upstairs.

On the racks are two new documents that request additional items to the General Assembly agenda. One item concerns follow-up to the Millennium Summit, which, as you know, is one of the issues that the General Assembly President has been working very hard on.

The second is cooperation between the United Nations and the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The General Committee will meet on Monday to decide if these should be included in the agenda of the General Assembly.

That's all I have. The work continues.

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