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

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY THE OFFICE OF THE 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 the Spokesman for the Secretary-General

Good afternoon everyone, sorry for the delay. The guest at the briefing today is Hans Haekkerup, the Defence Minister of Denmark, who has just been appointed as the next Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Kosovo, replacing Bernard Kouchner. We will hear from him in just a minute.

**Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary)

The Secretary-General made an unscheduled appearance before the Fifth Committee last night, to underline the urgency of reaching a decision on the scale of assessments for the regular budget and the peacekeeping budget for the years 2001 to 2003. The President of the General Assembly also appeared before the Committee, which is continuing its deliberations today.

**Sierra Leone and Angola

The release of the report on Sierra Leone sanctions, including conflict diamonds, is currently on hold, pending an outcome of a discussion in the Council underway now on the presentation of the report.

The planned briefing to the press by the Chair of the Sierra Leone sanctions committee, Ambassador Chowdhury of Bangladesh, and the panel's members has been cancelled, and he is expected to speak at the stake-out mike in a short period of time.

Meanwhile, the final report of the Monitoring Mechanism of Sanctions Against the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) will be presented to the Security Council tomorrow. Ambassador Paul Heinbecker of Canada and the Chair of the Monitoring Mechanism, Ambassador Juan Larrain of Chile, are expected to brief you here in 226 tomorrow at 12:45 p.m.

**Security Council

The Security Council has scheduled a long day of consultations.

Iraq was the first item. Council members heard a briefing by Han Blix, Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UMOVIC). He introduced the Commission’s third quarterly report, which was published earlier this month.

The Council was then briefed by Yuliy Vorontsov, the high-level Coordinator dealing with the issue of missing Kuwaiti and third country nationals as well as Kuwaiti property seized by Iraq. He introduced the third report of the Secretary-General on this matter.

Daily Press Briefing - 3 - 20 December 2000

The second topic on today’s consultations agenda is Eritrea/Ethiopia. Council members will be discussing the possibility of a draft resolution to welcome the recent peace agreement between the two countries.

Following that discussion, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, will brief Council members on the Secretary- General’s latest report on the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone.

**Afghanistan

Late yesterday afternoon, the Security Council adopted a resolution tightening sanctions against the Taliban by a vote of 13 in favour, with China and Malaysia abstaining. The measures, which include an arms embargo, will take effect at one minute after midnight on January 19, and last for one year in the absence of Taliban’s cooperation with the Council's demands, which include handover of the indicted terrorist Usama bin Laden.

Meanwhile yesterday, the General Assembly adopted a resolution on Afghanistan which reaffirms its support of the good offices role of the Secretary-General and his Personal Representative aimed at achieving a political solution to the Afghan conflict.

**Appointment of Civilian Police Commissioner for United Nations Mission in Kosovo

The Secretary-General is pleased to announce the appointment of Assistant Chief Constable Christopher Albiston as the new Civilian Police Commissioner for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. Assistant Chief Constable Albiston is from the United Kingdom and is currently serving with the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Assistant Chief Constable Albiston will replace Commissioner Sven Frederiksen from Denmark, who has held the position of Civilian Police Commissioner since August 1999 and who carried out his functions with great distinction. The Secretary-General wishes to thank Commissioner Frederiksen for his dedication and, in particular, for his work in establishing the Kosovo Police Service. Assistant Chief Constable Albiston is expected to take up his duties in Pristina in the first days of January.

**Kosovo

Last night in the northern Kosovo town of Zubin Potok, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a United Nations van that had been parked in front of a police station. The van was destroyed and the police station was damaged in that attack, and four other United Nations vehicles were damaged when semi- automatic weapons rounds were fired at them.

No injuries were reported in the incident. Today, the Secretary-General's Special Representative, Bernard Kouchner, deplored the Zubin Potok attack, and said that the recent violence in Kosovo -- including the attacks on United Nations and Kosovo Force (KFOR) personnel in Leposavic over the weekend -- was unacceptable. Kouchner said that any attack on the United Nations Mission or on KFOR would result in a strong reaction, and he urged the Serbian community to refrain from violence, arguing that extremists on both sides want to undermine the path to peace in Kosovo. We have more information in a press release.

**East Timor

About 450 refugees will arrive in East Timor on Friday, 22 December, for a Christmas visit organized by the United Nations mission there and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The refugees, from camps in the vicinity of Kupang in West Timor, will be picked up in Kupang by a ship tomorrow. The refugees will be brought to Dili and subsequently transported to their respective home districts. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Field Officers will monitor the well being of the visitors during their stay. There are more details available in the briefing note from Dili.

**United Nations System Staff College

Following is a statement attributable to the Spokesman:

“The Secretary-General was very pleased at the adoption, this morning, in the General Assembly, of a resolution concerning the institutionalization of the United Nations System Staff College in Turin. The basic mission of the College is to nurture innovation and common management culture throughout the United Nations system. The global challenges facing the system increasingly call for new, concerted responses cutting across the areas of competence of individual United Nations organizations and agencies. By providing a common, modern instrument for system-wide learning, the College will greatly strengthen the capacity of staff to be agents of change and to meet these challenges in an effective and cohesive way.”

**International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Today in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, told reporters at a year-end press briefing that, although she had no new indictments to announce against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, he and other indictees must stand trial in The Hague.

To that end, she said, she is pursuing investigations of the financial assets of those accused by the Prosecutor's Office and would like to see the money in their bank accounts frozen -- a matter Del Ponte has raised with the Security Council. She also said that, after two years of exhumation work in Kosovo, pathologists have conducted more than 1,800 autopsies and the remains of some 4,000 victims have been found. You can see the rest in the press release upstairs.

**Signings

Egypt this morning became the eightieth country to sign the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and Oman became the 123rd country to sign the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

**Press Releases and Briefings

In her farewell speech to her staff, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, said they should not be bureaucratic and should keep thinking. “Overly bureaucratic organizations”, she said, “are going to become irrelevant in a globalized world”. We have a press release with more text.

In a second press release, the World Health Organization warns that nursing and midwifery services worldwide are in crisis due to poorly planned workforce policies and fragmented health systems. Hazardous working conditions, poor pay and lack of career development are driving nurses out of the health sector and this is hindering the functioning of many health services.

Immediately after this briefing ends, at about 12:30, there will be a press briefing in this room by the Permanent Observer for Palestine to the United Nations, Ambassador Nasser al-Kidwa.

**Press Conferences Tomorrow

At 11:15 a.m., General Assembly President, Harri Holkeri, will provide a wrap-up of the General Assembly's work.

At 3 p.m., Ambassador Jean-David Levitte (France) will give a press briefing on the French Presidency of the European Union.

And finally, the World Chronicle programme, produced by the Department of Public Information, will feature Joao Honwana, the Chief of the Conventional Arms Brach of the Department for Disarmament Affairs, and you can see that on in-house channels 3 or 31 at 2:30 p.m. today.

Any questions before we go to Sue?

**Questions and Answers

Question: The diamonds report is not out, but has been leaked. Are there any reactions, and has the Secretary-General read it?

Spokesman: No, of course he has read it and we don’t react to leaks Sorry.

Question: Any reaction to the announcement of an extended ceasefire in Kashmir?

Spokesman: All I can say on that is that we welcome this development and we hope it will contribute to the resolution of the problem of Jammu-Kashmir.

Anything else? After these two discouraging responses, we will go to Sue.

Briefing by the Spokeswoman for the President of the General Assembly

This morning, the plenary adopted a large number of reports from the Second Committee. The resolutions contained in them related to finance and economic issues. I won’t go through the details, because there were too many of them, but there was one recorded vote, on a resolution related to the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan, over their natural resources. That was a recorded vote of 147 in favour, two against and three abstentions.

Shortly after the adoption of that resolution, there was an incident in the plenary, when three young people created a disturbance in the room. There were two males and one female. They were shouting and holding cloth banners with signs saying “UN = Anti-Semitism”. Apparently, the young people were representatives of an organization called “Betar”, the Educational Youth Organization. They are currently in security custody and they are being questioned.

After the incident happened in the plenary, the President of the General Assembly sent a letter to the Chief of Security, asking how such an incident could have happened, how people could have got into the General Assembly, and what measures are going to be taken to ensure that such an incident does not happen again. This was also raised at the end of the meeting by the delegation of Syria, and as a result of that the President has sent his letter.

After the plenary today, there will be another plenary tomorrow, which is also in the Journal.

Today, the Fifth Committee is meeting in closed consultation. As Fred said, the President accompanied the Secretary-General last night to the Fifth Committee. He had also spoken with the Fifth Committee earlier in the day, encouraging them to please finish their work. We hope this morning they will complete their work on all outstanding items apart from the scale of assessments, which will then be the last remaining item. And we are still hopeful that the plenary will finish on Friday.

I would like also to remind you that tomorrow Mr. Holkeri will hold his wrap-up press conference at 11:15 a.m. in this room, and I hope to see you all there. Thank you.

**Questions and Answers

Question: Has Security determined how these people got into the hall?

Spokeswoman: I believe they were part of a guided tour and broke off the guided tour.

Question: Who is allowed in the plenary during the votes?

Spokeswoman: You have to have a special pass to get onto the floor of the General Assembly. Visitors such as these young people would not be able to get

Daily Press Briefing - 6 - 20 December 2000

onto the floor normally. Visitors can only go upstairs in the top balcony and to get there, they had to be part of a guided tour that was going through the back of the plenary.

Question: Were they in the top part when they displayed their banner?

Spokeswoman: No, they were on the floor of the plenary. They had jumped over the barrier and one of them ran down the isle to the front of the room shouting the same words that were on the banner. A young woman chained herself to the railing on the floor to the side. When I say “chained”, I mean she had a plastic handcuff which she put around the railing, and that was quickly cut by Security.

Question: Will Security turn them over to the New York City police, or will it be handled in-house?

Spokeswoman: Security is getting legal advice from the Legal Office, who will determine what happens next.

Question: Are there Security guards posted generally at the entrance to the Assembly Hall in the area where the tour guides go?

Spokeswoman: Yes, I think Security is somewhat short-staffed. There were plain-clothed security guards, as well as uniformed security guards in the area. The demonstrators were quickly apprehended by both uniformed and non-uniformed security guards.

Question: Could we get the Secretary-General’s statement to the Fifth Committee last night?

Spokesman for the Secretary-General: He spoke only from talking points. I don’t think I can release those to you. I will check.

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