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

This is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

I thought it was 11 o’clock, no it’s 12 o’clock.  We’ll start with a statement attributable to the Secretary-General on the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic.

**Statement Attributable to Secretary-General

“The arrest of Slobodan Milosevic is an important step in the process of healing after the tragic events in the Balkans since 1991.  I commend the authorities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for this decisive action.

“Slobodan Milosevic is being charged for crimes under national law.  As is well known, Slobodan Milosevic has also been charged under the Statute of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for serious violations of international law.

“The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has an obligation to cooperate with this Tribunal.  I am confident that the competent authorities in Belgrade will do so and urge them to immediately discuss with the Tribunal how this cooperation should be extended.  It is important that those responsible for the violations of international humanitarian law and the laws and customs of war that occurred during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia are brought to justice under due process.”

**Yugoslavia Tribunal

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia welcomed former President Milosevic's arrest, which will make it possible for the authorities in Belgrade to comply with their obligations under international law to transfer to The Hague all persons who are indicted by the Tribunal.

Tribunal President Judge Claude Jorda and Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte requested, in a statement issued yesterday, that the authorities in Belgrade serve Milosevic with the arrest warrant the Tribunal had issued for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo in 1999.

Ms. Del Ponte has also said repeatedly that she is continuing her investigation into allegations that Milosevic was responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, and the Tribunal has indicated that further indictments against him are likely to be handed down soon.

The Registrar of the Tribunal, Hans Holthuis, intends to travel as soon as possible to Belgrade to remind the authorities there of their obligations and to request a copy of the indictment against Milosevic filed by the national legal authority.

**Secretary-General Opens ACC in Nairobi

The Secretary-General arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, from Switzerland Sunday morning, in pouring tropical rain.  He was greeted at the airport by Kenyan   Vice-President George Saitoti.

This morning, he opened the twice-yearly meeting of the heads of all United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, known as the Administrative Committee on Coordination, or ACC.  Twenty out of 25 United Nations agencies are represented at the highest levels.  The two-day meeting will focus on follow-up to the Millennium Summit, including ways to strengthen United Nations system-wide support for sustainable development in Africa.

The Secretary-General told the ACC members this morning, Nairobi "is the United Nations' only major duty station in Africa and, for that matter”, he said, “in the developing world.  And the work we are doing at this year's ACC has particularly strong relevance for the people of Africa".

After this morning's ACC session, the Secretary-General spoke with some 2,000 United Nations staff working in Nairobi.  He also met briefly with two of the aid workers recently released from captivity in north Mogadishu, Somalia.

In the early afternoon, he met with the Nairobi press corps.  Asked for his reaction to United States President George W. Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, he said:

"I regret the United States decision, but I think that gives us one more reason to fight in a more determined manner to bring environmental issues into focus.  We need to take steps to halt climate warming", he added.  "It is a fact."

"Yes”, he said, “probably not all the scientific evidence is in, but there is enough evidence, and an overwhelming majority of scientists agree that it is a phenomenon that we need to fight."  A transcript of the full press conference should be here in an hour or so.

Tomorrow morning, the Secretary-General is expected to call on Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, before resuming participation in the ACC.

**Somalia

On those two remaining United Nations personnel still in captivity in north Mogadishu, we don't have much new to report.  The two, Bill Condie and Roger Carter -- both of the United Kingdom -- have been visited on a regular basis by a local staff officer of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), who says the two are in stable condition.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is continuing its contacts in an effort to secure the prompt release of the two detainees, who were part of a group of seven United Nations personnel who were detained following an attack on a Médecins sans frontières compound last Tuesday.  The other five personnel were released unconditionally.

**Security Council

There are no meetings of the Security Council today.  The President of the Council for April, Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom, is holding bilateral talks this morning with other Council members to determine the programme of work for this month.

Shortly after this briefing, at 12:45 p.m., Ambassador Greenstock will be here in room S-226 to talk to you about the United Kingdom presidency of the Council during April.

**Bosnia

This afternoon in Sarajevo, a crowd of between 150 and 250 Bosnian Muslims  -- including many relatives of the victims of the Srebrenica massacre -- surrounded the headquarters of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) in an emotional protest.

The protesters had been misinformed that Naser Oric, formerly the Bosnian Muslim general in command of Srebrenica, would be arrested by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.  Oric was, in fact, at the United Nations headquarters in Sarajevo today, where he appeared voluntarily to be interviewed by the Tribunal's personnel.  However, he has not been indicted by the Tribunal and was not arrested.

Julian Harston, the Secretary-General's Deputy Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other officials of the United Nations Mission, met briefly with the demonstrators and explained the situation.  After about two hours, at approximately 3:30 in the afternoon (local time), the crowd dispersed peacefully.

**Democratic Republic of Congo

Half of some 260 Senegalese troops are scheduled to arrive tomorrow in Kananga in south-central Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The second half of that group is expected later this week.

Meanwhile, we have learned that the report of the Security Council’s Special Panel on the exploitation of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will not be issued tomorrow as had been planned.  The report is now expected out next week, and we’ll keep you posted.  In addition, we have asked the Panel to brief you when the report does come out.

**UNIKOM Report

The Secretary-General's latest report to the Security Council on the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (or UNIKOM), covering events over the past six months, is out on the racks today.

In it, the Secretary-General says that the situation along the Iraq-Kuwait border has remained generally calm and that the United Nations Mission has carried out its tasks smoothly, with the cooperation of the Iraqi and Kuwaiti authorities.

Regarding the report of air violations of the demilitarized zone, the Mission has explained to the Government of Iraq that "it cannot rely on inference and supposition" to determine which aircraft are violating the zone, and it lacks the technical and intelligence capacity to make a positive identification.  In any case, the report says, the United States and the United Kingdom have made it clear that they are continuing to patrol a "no-fly zone" in southern Iraq.

The Secretary-General recommends that the Mission be maintained.  The Security Council expects to hold consultations to consider this report on Wednesday of this week.

      **East Timor

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, appointed José Ramos-Horta, Cabinet Member for Foreign Affairs, as a member of the East Timor National Council to fill the vacancy created by Xanana Gusmão’s resignation last week.

Mr. Gusmão, elected Speaker of the National Council last October, tendered his resignation on 28 March.  He held a seat as a representative of the National Council for Timorese Resistance (CNRT) -– the umbrella resistance group.  His replacement, therefore, must be from the CNRT and Mr. Ramos-Horta is one of the CNRT vice-presidents.

The National Council met today for the first time since Mr. Gusmao’s resignation.  They agreed that in their next meeting on 9 April -- that’s next Monday -- Council members will elect their new Speaker.  For more details, you can look at the briefing notes from Dili. 

**United Nations University

Tomorrow, from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium, the United Nations University and the University of Warwick Center for the Study of Globalization and Regionalization will present a study on the impact of civil society on the international financial system.  We have an embargoed copy of the press release with more details.

**Budget

Today, Qatar became the sixty-fourth Member State to pay in full its 2001 regular budget dues, and that was with payment of more than $530,000.  We are running well behind last year at this point, when there were 76 Member States paid in full.

**Press Releases

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) today announced significant progress towards an agreement on standards for foods derived from biotechnology.  The Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on Foods Derived from Biotechnology, which met in Japan last week, has agreed on draft guidelines for the assessment of genetically modified plants.

Then from the WHO, we have a note for the press on the optimal duration of exclusive breastfeeding. A multi-country study involving more than 10,000 children to measure growth patterns of healthy breastfed infants and children is under way, and this will lead to a global strategy on the feeding of infants and young children.

And finally from the International Labour Organization (ILO), we have a report on the tourism sector for a tripartite meeting starting in Geneva today. The report notes that, while the hotel, catering and tourism sector produces 3 to 4 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 3 per cent of the world’s labour force, the workers earn at least 20 per cent less than workers in other sectors.

**Press Conference

Press conference tomorrow.  At 11:15 a.m. in this room, Bagher Asadi of Iran will be here to launch the “Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific, 2001”.  The Survey, which is the flagship publication of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), provides analysis and information on the principal challenges facing the region.

If you want more information, there is a note to correspondents on the racks today.  That’s all I have.

**Questions and Answers

Question:  The two UNICEF workers being held -- any reason why they are still being held?

Spokesman:  No, we don’t have any reason why these last two are being held. If you read through the cable traffic, you might see some speculation about it, but I can’t share that with you.  We are still hopeful that they will be released and it may take a little more time, but we hope not much more.

Question:  When two permanent members of the Security Council are involved in a looming crisis, what is the role for the United Nations and the Secretary-General?

Spokesman:  Well, when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.  I don’t think the Secretary-General would inject himself in a fight between two members of the Council.  I don’t know what two members you are talking about or what issue you are talking about, but it is usually politically unwise for the Secretariat to intervene.

Question:  The United States and China and the plane incident.

Spokesman:  First of all, I am not sure if the Council itself is dealing with that issue, and I think that the Secretary-General would wait for the Council to ask him, if they did take up that issue, before he injected himself.  And I am not aware that he has had any contacts with the principals to date.

Question:  On Slobodan Milosevic, I don’t know if there has been any previous precedents like this where you’ve got somebody wanted by the International Tribunal, but also facing charges within his own national jurisdiction.  Do you know of anything that is a precedent?  Would the United Nations believe it’s wise for him to go through whatever national legal proceedings that have to happen first before the Tribunal gets involved?

Spokesman:  I’d have to consult the lawyers in that one, both in the precedent and on whether the national trial could go forward.  If the national trial went forward and resulted in a prison sentence, would that then be set aside while they sent him to The Hague?  I am not sure about that. I’d want to ask the experts.  [He later announced that the Tribunal’s Statute provides for concurrent jurisdiction with national courts.  However, the Tribunal’s indictment has primacy if the Tribunal makes a formal request to the State asking it to defer its jurisdiction.]

Question:  The Republican Party symbol is the elephant.  Is your comment about the elephants and the grass related in general?  Anyway, I just want to make sure of your first answer, if you were speaking rhetorically or of any crisis in general.  When you spoke then, were you referring to the US-China dispute?

Spokesman:  No, I think, in general, you will find that when there is a fundamental disagreement between members of the Council on a matter that is before the Council, the Secretary-General will not intervene.  The Council can, in theory, say “we disagree on something” and ask the Secretary-General for a view. They might ask him to have his Legal Counsel provide a legal view.  That has happened in the past.

Question:  When is the Secretary-General back?  This week?  The end of the week?  Do you know?

Spokesman:  The schedule is still a bit flexible because of a pending change that might delay his return by a day so ... 

Question:  A new country?

Spokesman:  Yes.

Question:  Is the Secretary-General going to insist that the indicted war criminal who is in a jail in Serbia now to be brought to The Hague as soon as possible in a way to pacify the region?

Spokesman:  You are talking about President Milosevic?

Question:  Yes.

Spokesman:  I think the Secretary-General’s statement is clear.  He is calling on the Government of Yugoslavia to cooperate with the Tribunal.  The Tribunal itself put out a statement yesterday saying that it will send its Registrar to Belgrade to get details on the charges being brought against Milosevic in the national courts and also to remind them of their obligations under the Tribunal Statute.

Question:  Just on the Registrar, have you got any notion of when he is due to get there?  If he has set up any meetings yet?

Spokesman:  No, but the announcement said soonest, or something to that effect, so I would expect that he will be leaving shortly.  We can call The Hague for you right after the briefing to see if they know when he will be leaving.

Question:  Hans Blix goes to Washington to meet with Colin Powell Wednesday. Do you have any information on the reason, timing?

Spokesman:  No, in fact, I wasn’t aware of that.  Let me check with you after the briefing.  [He later announced that Mr. Blix is, in fact, going to Washington this Tuesday, where he will meet with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and then on Wednesday morning with Secretary of State Colin Powell.  The purpose is routine consultations, as he has had with the other permanent members of the Council.]

Thank you very much.

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