DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
Press Briefing
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL
20001130The 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's Trip
Good afternoon. On his way to visit four African countries and Palermo, Italy, the Secretary-General leaves New York this evening for Geneva, where he will meet tomorrow with his Special Representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kamel Morjane.
Early in the morning on Saturday he will leave for Freetown, Sierra Leone. In addition to meetings with President Ahmad Tejan Kabba and the United Nations Mission senior staff, the Secretary-General will also go to Port Loko and Lakka to visit a Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration camp and the Nigerian Battalion of the peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone. While in the field, he will meet with local chiefs and the populace who will confer on him an "honorary paramount chieftaincy title". He will also visit a Rehabilitation Centre for ex- child combatants.
From Sierra Leone, he will go to Cotonou, Benin, where he will arrive Sunday evening. On Monday 4 December, the Secretary-General will speak at the opening ceremony of the Conference on New and Restored Democracies. He will also meet with Benin President, Mathieu Kerekou. On Tuesday before leaving for Ethiopia, the Secretary-General will go to Porto Novo to meet with a delegation of youth and elders from the six departments of Benin.
He will be in Addis Ababa from the night of 5 December till the morning of 8 December. During this period, he will hold meetings with senior Ethiopian authorities, including Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He will also visit the offices of the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea -- called UNMEE -- and meet with the Secretary-General of the Organization for African Unity, Salim Salim, as well as with senior United Nations officials in Addis.
On Thursday, 7 December, the Secretary-General will address the African Development Forum on HIV/AIDS. The Forum is at the level of heads of State, with whom the Secretary-General is expected to hold a number of bilateral meetings.
The Secretary-General will arrive in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, on the morning of 8 December. As in Addis, he will hold meetings with the most senior Government authorities, including President Isaias Afwerki. He will also meet with UNMEE officials and visit the team site in Adi Keyh. While in Asmara he will also meet United Nations personnel. During his stay in these two countries of the Horn of Africa, the Secretary- General will be joined by Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the World Food Programme, who is also his Special Envoy on Drought in the Greater Horn of Africa. In addition to the more political and peacekeeping meetings I just mentioned, the Secretary-General will also visit projects, in both countries, related to education, AIDS and food aid.
He will leave Asmara on 9 December for Palermo, Italy, where he will participate on 12 December in the signing conference for the convention on transnational organized crime. On that same day he will also inaugurate the Documentation Centre against Organized Crime in the town of Corleone. While in Corleone, he will also meet with youth, teachers and civil society representatives in the town's plaza.
He is expected to be back in New York on Wednesday, 13 December and the programme, with more details is available in my office.
**Appointment
The Secretary-General has appointed Amara Essy, the former Foreign Minister of Cote d'Ivoire and also a former President of the General Assembly, as his Special Envoy to the Central African Republic and the Republic of the Congo.
Mr. Essy, who will start his mission on 2 December will assess the humanitarian, economic, political, social and security consequences of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on these two neighbouring countries. Mr. Essy is expected to report back to the Secretary-General on 18 December.
We are trying to get his bio. I hope we will have it in my office shortly.
**Afghanistan
The quarterly report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council and the General Assembly on Afghanistan is out today, in which he describes an "exceptionally difficult year for most Afghans".
Saying that developments in that country have given little ground for optimism, the Secretary-General deplored the Taliban's failure to turn over Osama bin Laden in accordance with a Security Council resolution adopted a year ago.
He said, however, that the 2 November agreement by the Taliban and the United Front to enter into a dialogue with no preconditions provides a glimmer of hope in an otherwise grim scenario.
The Secretary-General concluded by noting a tendency to see Afghanistan as a series of compartmentalized problems, be they narcotics, terrorism or refugees, and to seek to solve them in isolation rather than through a comprehensive approach.
He said, "It is to be hoped that the Security Council and the General Assembly will set for themselves clear and achievable objectives in Afghanistan, and that their resolutions and decisions will be guided by the principle of effectiveness in achieving those goals and taken in the context of, rather than being a substitute for, a comprehensive strategy to bring about a lasting solution to the Afghan conflict."
We also have the weekly humanitarian update on Afghanistan which is out today.
Meanwhile, the Personal Representative of the Secretary-General in Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, concludes today a two-day visit to Delhi, at the invitation of the Indian Government. Prior to visiting India, the Personal Representative had been in Moscow. Mr. Vendrell's visits are part of the ongoing consultations that he regularly holds with governments concerned with the situation in Afghanistan. He has also been meeting with Taliban officials following the signature by the two Afghan factions of the agreement to start a process of dialogue to achieve a political solution to the Afghan conflict.
We have the full text of that statement available. I read only parts of it.
**Iraq
After meeting this morning, the Security Council's Sanctions Committee on Iraq, also known as the 661 Committee, has requested the United Nations oil overseers to communicate to the buyers of Iraqi oil immediately that, at this point, there is no agreed pricing mechanism for the month of December for the sale of Iraqi oil.
However, loadings of oil can continue without a pricing mechanism, but until there are United Nations approved prices, no payments can be made for the oil lifted. Once there is an agreed pricing mechanism between the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization or SOMO and the 661 Committee, payments, including for oil already loaded, can resume into the United Nations controlled Iraq escrow account.
The Committee has also requested the oil overseers to inform the buyers of its commitment to reach an agreement with SOMO on a pricing mechanism at a fair market value.
**Security Council
The Security Council is meeting this morning in closed consultations, with a number of items on its agenda. The Council first took up the subject of Bougainville, with a briefing by Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Danilo Turk, which centered on the state of the negotiations between the Papua New Guinea Government and the Bougainville separatist forces. The Council is expected to send a letter to the Secretary-General taking note of the extension by one year of the United Nations Political Office in Bougainville.
The Council then took up the issue of "No Exit Without Strategy". As you'll recall, on 15 November an open debate was held to examine the way the Council decides to end or substantially reduce its involvement in a mission. Today the Council is considering the text of a letter that will be sent to the Secretary-General asking him to submit a report to the Council on the subject of "No Exit Without Strategy".
Their final item is expected to be a discussion on a technical resolution on the workings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
For the record, last night the Council also met in closed consultations where two draft resolutions were tabled -- one submitted by Mali on behalf of the Non- Aligned Movement, on the establishment of a United Nations Observer Force in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the second, submitted by the Russian delegation, proposing a lifting of the arms embargo against the Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
**Democratic Republic of the Congo
We have a press release in French, issued by the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today, in which the head of that mission and the Secretary-General's Special Representative, Kamel Morjane, welcome the outcomes of the Maputo summit and the subsequent meeting of the parties to the Lusaka ceasefire agreement.
We reported to you on the Maputo meeting earlier this week. On the latter meeting of the so-called Political Committee, which was held yesterday in Lusaka, Morjane highlighted the importance of the adoption of a disengagement plan for forces in the Congo and a humanitarian protocol providing for unhindered access for the delivery of aid.
Morjane will report on these two meetings he attended when he meets with the Secretary-General in Geneva tomorrow.
**Zimbabwe
The Administrator of the United Nations Development Progamme (UNDP) and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Mark Malloch Brown, today completed the first day of a series of meetings in Zimbabwe that will extend through Friday.
You'll recall that we announced yesterday that he was visiting Zimbabwe through 2 December, at the request of the Secretary-General, to explore the possibility of establishing a sound technical process to take forward the Government's land reform initiative.
Malloch Brown met today with members of President Robert Mugabe's Government and described the discussions so far as "productive and useful". He said he was looking forward to meeting with President Mugabe and other members of his Government, as well as other stakeholders, on Friday.
He added, "I hope my visit can help put in motion a broader process to re-open dialogue between all stakeholders leading to implementation of an internationally supported land reform programme".
**Press Releases
Press releases and reports today -- on the racks you'll find the first performance report on the programme budget for the biennium 2000-2001. This report identifies adjustments required because of variations in rates of inflation and exchange and also takes into account additional mandates of the General Assembly. The revised resources required for the biennium, $2.495 billion, will result in a reduction of more than $40 million from the initial appropriation of $2.535 billion.
Then there's a press release from the UNDP announcing the launch of the Botswana Human Development Report for the Year 2000. The report, entitled "Towards an AIDS-Free Generation", says that although Botswana has one of the highest rates of prevalence of HIV, this can be overcome by the year 2016 through changes in sexual behaviour and comprehensive prevention, treatment and development efforts. The full report is available on the UNDP Web site.
In a second press release, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) today announced the appointment of German Television producer, Alfred Biolek, as its Goodwill Ambassador and Face to Face Spokesman for Germany. Face to Face is an international campaign to publicize the plight of millions of women and young people denied access to reproductive health care and family planning services.
**Press Conferences
And then we have a press conference in this room at 12:30 p.m. -- Elhadj Sy, the UNAIDS Representative in New York, together with representatives of Lovelife, which is a South African national HIV prevention programme, and they will be here to discuss the stopping of the spread of AIDS.
That's all I have. Any questions before we go to Sue? All right Sue it's all yours.
Briefing by Spokeswoman for President of General Assembly
Thank you. The plenary this morning will conclude the discussion it started yesterday on the question of Palestine and the four draft resolutions are expected to be taken up tomorrow, not today.
This afternoon, the plenary will discuss the situation in the Middle East. There are about 30 speakers listed, so we expect that to continue until tomorrow morning, and then they will take up the two resolutions related to that issue. So tomorrow morning there will be six resolutions acted on.
Tomorrow afternoon, the plenary will take up the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict. As you know, this is a new agenda item and the first time we will have a resolution about this item in the General Assembly. The text of the draft resolution is available on the racks. It is entitled "The role of diamonds in fuelling conflict: breaking the link between the illicit transaction of rough diamonds and armed conflict as a contribution to prevention and settlements of conflicts". Also out today is an updated schedule for the work of the plenary. It was made available this morning. I'm not sure it's on the racks but you can get copies in the Spokesman's Office. We've made some copies for you.
Just to highlight a couple of upcoming subjects that will be discussed. On Monday morning we have the Situation in Central America and in the afternoon the reports of the Third Committee. So there will be a number of important resolutions going through the plenary on Monday afternoon. I don't know how long that will last but there is nothing else scheduled at the moment for the plenary until Friday. I don't think the discussion of the Third Committee reports will last that long but in any event...
Friday morning we have the observance of the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
And fittingly on that day, the reports of the Fourth Committee -- which as you know is the Special Political and Decolonization Committee -- those reports will be going through the plenary also on Friday morning. That's all I have. Thank you.
Spokesman: Any questions? I have an update on the Security Council. They have adjourned the informal consultations and they are about to go into a formal meeting to take action on the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. So that's about to happen. Thank you very much.
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