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

The following is a near-verbatim transcription of today's noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General:

**Secretary-General’s Trip

Last week, we mentioned that the Secretary-General will be travelling to Yaounde, Cameroon, to attend the annual France-Africa Summit on the 17th of January. After leaving Cameroon on the evening of 18 January, the Secretary-General is now scheduled to go to four other countries from the 20th to the

30th of January.

The Secretary-General, accompanied by Mrs. Annan, is planning to visit Beijing, China, from 20 to 22 January, and then Tokyo, Japan, until the 25th of January.  In both countries, the Secretary-General will have a range of meetings to discuss current issues involving the United Nations.

From Tokyo, the Secretary-General is scheduled to travel to Davos, via Zurich, Switzerland, to attend the annual World Economic Forum.  He will deliver an address on Sunday, the 28th of January, during which he is expected to urge international business leaders to play a more active role in giving the poor of the world a chance to benefit from globalization.

His final stop is scheduled to be the Swedish capital of Stockholm, where he will meet with the authorities and give an address at the Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance.  The need for inclusiveness and diversity, including giving proper treatment to immigrants and asylum seekers, is expected to be the theme of his address.  The results of the intergovernmental conference will be submitted to the United Nations World Conference on Racism later this year.

The Secretary-General is expected to return to New York on Wednesday, the 31st of January.

**Secretary-General Statement

The following statement is attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General:

"Mr. Razali Ismail, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Myanmar, concluded his five-day mission to Myanmar today.

"During his stay in Yangon, he held talks with representatives of the Government, including Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, Secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), and Foreign Minister Win Aung.

"Mr. Razali also held two meetings with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, General Secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD).  His meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was the first contact by an outside visitor in nearly three months.

"The Secretary-General was encouraged to learn that during his mission,

Mr. Razali was able to confirm that the two sides had started a direct dialogue since last October and that they were satisfied with the results achieved so far in the area of confidence-building.  The two sides are expected to start more substantive discussions shortly.

"The Secretary-General reiterates his call for the two sides to seize the momentum and work to achieve national reconciliation in Myanmar at an early date.  He also appeals to the international community to continue to support the ongoing process of dialogue."

**Security Council

The Security Council is holding consultations today on the humanitarian situation in Guinea along its borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone, on which it is being briefed by the new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers.

The Secretary-General attended the session and introduced Mr. Lubbers, who is expected to come to the Security Council stakeout microphone following the briefing, which is his first to the Council as High Commissioner.

On Guinea, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today reported missing a radio operator, who has been missing since a

6 December rebel attack on the town of Gueckedou in southern Guinea.  In the initial confusion following that attack, the whereabouts of the local staff member Joseph Loua was not clear.  But a subsequent inquiry by UNHCR security officials revealed that he had been abducted by the attackers.

The UNHCR also announced it was sending an emergency team to Guinea’s volatile "parrot’s beak" area, where up to 250,000 refugees and internally displaced people are in urgent need of food and medical supplies.  The situation in the area, briefly visited by UNHCR security officials last week, is believed to be much worse than elsewhere in Guinea, as no assistance has reached it since early December.

Also on the Council’s agenda for this morning’s session is Sierra Leone. Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno is to brief on the latest developments, including the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone's (UNAMSIL) contacts with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), as well as the United Nations’ involvement in efforts by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to deploy interposition forces along the borders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

**Depleted Uranium

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced today that its Executive Director, Klaus Toepfer, and Pekka Haavisto, the Chairman of the Balkans Task Force, will be holding a press conference in Geneva this Thursday to bring reporters up to date on the issue of depleted uranium.  They had announced yesterday that that press conference would take place tomorrow, Wednesday.  That has now been shifted by one day.

The Task Force’s report is due out in March of this year.

Meanwhile in Kosovo, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, Bernard Kouchner, while visiting the town of Klina, announced the creation of a working group comprised of Albanians and Serbs, which will work with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies to examine the possible health effects of depleted uranium ammunition on the civilian population.

Mr. Kouchner also said that he had a number of conversation with Lord Robertson, Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), on this issue.  They agreed to invite several specialized non-governmental organizations to examine the issue in Kosovo.

While in Klina, Mr. Kouchner was given a demonstration by Italian troops of their Nuclear Biological and Chemical Weapons Unit, which has been involved in looking for traces of radiation at sites where depleted uranium ammunition was used.

**Office of Iraq Programme

The weekly update from the Office of the Iraq Programme shows that Iraqi oil exports under the United Nations “oil-for-food” programme continued to be slow during the week of 30 December 2000 to 5 January 2001.  There was a single loading at Mina al-Bakr terminal with a volume of 1.8 million barrels of oil for an estimated value of $32 million.  There were no oil loadings at Ceyhan terminal in Turkey.  The average price of Iraqi oil exported during this period was $19.6 per barrel.  In the current phase IX, which began on 6 December and ends on 3 June 2001, Iraq has exported 17.7 million barrels, earning an estimated $333 million in revenue.

The United Nations oil overseers and the Security Council’s 661 sanctions committee for Iraq during this period approved four new contracts for the purchase of Iraqi oil, consisting of 6 million barrels destined for the United States or Far Eastern markets, and another 6 million barrels for the European or United States markets.

The 661 Committee at a formal meeting yesterday discussed the Iraqi request for the allocation of 1 billion euros for assistance to the Palestinians from oil-for-food programme funds.  The discussion will continue at a subsequent meeting of the Committee to be scheduled next week.

**UNHCR/Afghanistan

Afghan refugees fleeing fighting and drought in northern Afghanistan continue to stream into Pakistan, at a rate of 200 to 250 people a day, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  More than 60,000 new Afghan refugees fled to Pakistan during the last four months of 2000, and about three quarters of the new arrivals are ethnic minorities, mainly Tajiks and Uzbeks.

The UNHCR is moving some 18,000 refugees from the Jalozai transit camp in Pakistan, where some children reportedly died as temperatures in the border region fell below zero.  The refugees should be transferred to other camps by the end of this week.

**East Timor

Tomorrow in East Timor, the first preliminary hearings of persons suspected of committing serious crimes following the popular consultation in 1999 will take place at the District Court in Dili.

Two people suspected of murder will undergo their first hearings -- one person suspected of a murder in the village of Hatolia on 26 September 1999, and another suspected of a murder on 8 September of that year in the village of Atudara.

Preliminary hearings on 10 other cases that have been submitted to East Timor's Special Panel for Serious Crimes will be held later this month.  Additional details can be found in today's briefing notes from Dili.

**Budget

Two more Member States have paid in full their regular budget contributions for the year 2001.  The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has made a payment of over $93,000 and Denmark has made a payment of more that $7.7 million, bringing the number of fully paid-up Member States to 11.

**Small Arms Panel

And finally, tomorrow, from 1:15 to 2:45 p.m. in Conference Room 6, there will be a panel discussion on "Small Arms Trafficking:  Human Consequences and Preventive Measures”.  The panel discussion is one of the events being held this week in conjunction with the session of the Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects.  All media are invited.

**Questions and Answers:

Question:  Bearing in mind that depleted uranium was used in Bosnia and Kosovo and that it is dangerous, what does the United Nations plan to do to protect their ground workers, in order to protect them from the negative influence of this material?

Spokesman:  First of all, we do not have any information concerning the use of depleted uranium weapons in Bosnia, so we are concentrating on Kosovo.  I think that Bernard Kouchner's efforts announced today concerning the civilian population are, first and foremost, in our minds.  We have not noticed any ill effects on the health of our own staff at this point and so we will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the health of the people.  That mainly would be to stay away from sites where fragments of these bombs might be located.

Question:  [Follow-up] Have there been discussions at Headquarters as to what would have to be undertaken in order to protect United Nations staff?

Spokesman:  I'd have to check with the security coordinator to see what discussions might have taken place.  I frankly do not know.

Question:  Do you have any details about the report that Biljana Plavsic, the former Bosnian Serb President, has turned herself in to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague?

Spokesman:  We saw press reports that she was in The Hague.  We did ask the Tribunal this morning if they had any comment and they said that they had nothing to say today.  They do have a weekly press briefing tomorrow at which an announcement might be made, but they did not authorize anything for us to say today.

Question:  Is the Secretary-General meeting with Donald Trump today and can you tell us anything about that meeting?  Are they discussing the Building?  Is it a sign that the United Nations is accepting it as inevitable?

Spokesman:  The Secretary-General is seeing Donald Trump at 3:30 this afternoon.  Mr. Trump sent him a letter expressing an interest in the United Nations' plan to renovate the complex.  The Secretary-General answered that letter by sending him the capital master plan, which is a public document, and for which the General Assembly recently approved monies to begin the initial formal planning stages.  So he is coming here today to discuss the capital master plan.

Question:  Are you saying that Donald Trump is concerned about construction on this Building?

Spokesman:  My impression is that as a businessman he is interested in the contract.  The Under-Secretary-General of Management would not discuss a contract with a bidder before the contract had been let.  The Secretary-General can discuss anything with anybody, so the meeting is just to explain the capital master plan and answer any questions Mr. Trump may have.  He may want to bid; he may not.  It is not yet out for bidding.

Question:  Back to the uranium issue.  Given that the bombing had somehow the blessing of the United Nations, is the United Nations going to take any measures to prevent anything of this sort happening in the future?

Spokesman:  The bombing in Kosovo did not have the blessing of the United Nations.  That was a major issue at that time.  The Security Council had not blessed that military action.  Nevertheless, the United Nations had taken early action.  [In 1999], the Secretary-General personally asked the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to look into the possible negative impact of this bombing.  You see the results of that initiative just recently with UNEP releasing the preliminary findings of that study which in ongoing.

Question:  Did you get any update regarding the visit of Alvaro de Soto [Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Cyprus] to Cyprus?

Spokesman:  We did check following yesterday's question.  He will be travelling to the region, including Ankara, Athens and Nicosia, in the next few weeks, but he did not have any specific dates to firm up yet.

Question:  Can you tell us anything further about the Secretary-General's meeting with Secretary of State Albright that was mentioned at yesterday's briefing?

Spokesman:  It lasted more that one hour.  It was one on one.  There were not even notetakers present, and I believe that the Secretary of State spoke to journalists on her way out of the building.  We would have nothing to add to that.

Question:  Regarding the amount of money that you mentioned from Iraqi oil to be spent on the Palestinian issue, do you have any specific information on how that will be worked out and who will do it?

Spokesman:  No.  I would refer you to the Iraqi report, which I think is a letter that is a document.  They asked to be able to give a billion euros to the Palestinian side.  I do not know if they specified how it would be spent.  I would have to refer you to the document.

Question:  You said that when the Secretary-General visits China, he is going to talk about the United Nations.  Would you elaborate on that?

Spokesman:  No, we just said that generally they would talk about United Nations issues.  That is standard and is what you would expect.  I am not aware that at this point there is any specific agenda. Typically, when he travels, his political and peacekeeping and humanitarian departments prepare for him briefs on a wide range of issues so that he is ready to respond to questions that officials might raise with him.

Question:  Regarding the direct dialogue talks in Myanmar, is this Suu Kyi herself with members of the junta or the representatives of her party and the junta.

Spokesman:  I am not sure that I can be more specific than the statement that I read.  I will have to get guidance to see if I can go beyond that to see if I can specifically answer the question that you have posed.

Question:  Was Razali Ismail in any way instrumental in those contacts and does he plan to visit Myanmar again?  Is there going to be a follow-up?

Spokesman:  The Secretary-General's objectives are stated here.  He encourages the two sides to continue efforts to national reconciliation, and he urges the international community to support that.  Clearly, his special envoy would have been working towards that end.  Whether there is any direct link between Mr. Razali's efforts and this outcome, I cannot say.

Thank you very much.

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