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.
Good afternoon.
**Secretary-General in Europe
The Secretary-General met this morning with United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Executive Director Peter Piot, in Geneva, to put the final touches on the draft statement on AIDS that he will deliver at the G-8 Summit in Genoa tomorrow.
He is now in Rome, and will leave for Genoa tomorrow morning. You asked me yesterday about the programme for Genoa. I can give you some of the elements. The Italian Government, I think, has now issued it officially.
At 5 p.m. tomorrow, which will be 11 a.m. New York time, the Secretary-General will participate in a ceremony for the Global AIDS and Health Fund. That will be attended by the eight heads of State or government of the eight members of the Group. He will make a statement, which will be broadcast live into the media centre in the Summit site. The information department here will have a live feed into United Nations Headquarters, and any of you who are interested can get an audio tape from the information department immediately afterwards. We hope we'll have the text by the end of today, if not, early tomorrow, that we can make available on an embargo basis.
At 7 p.m. local time, which will be 1 p.m. New York time, he will participate in what the G-8 call an outreach session, where they will meet with a number of heads of State or government from developing countries. The subject this year will be how to achieve the Millennium Summit goal for the reduction of poverty. A number of heads of international organizations will also attend that session.
That same group will then go to a working dinner, hosted by the President of Italy, Carlo Ciampi, for a continuation of their outreach discussions on poverty.
The Secretary-General will return to Rome tomorrow evening, and then fly to New York on Saturday.
**AIDS
Peter Piot, today, addressed the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) meeting in Geneva, introducing the UNAIDS report to ECOSOC and the report to the UNAIDS Programme Coordination Board.
He said that only now, for the first time since the world first heard of AIDS 20 years ago, “a global response is emerging that matches the devastating scale of the epidemic itself”.
Mr. Piot noted that AIDS is uniquely devastating because young adults are most affected. Ten years or more have been stripped from average life expectancy in the worst-affected countries. He said, “within two decades, some of these countries will have more surviving adults in their sixties and seventies than in their forties and fifties.”
The UNAIDS report to the Programme Coordination Board is available on the UNAIDS Web site, and the daunting statistics presented in the report show that even the increase in momentum in the fight against AIDS has not kept pace with the demands of the epidemic.
Copies of Piot’s speech are available in my Office. We also have available one copy of the AIDS report to the Programme Coordination Board, so you'll have to take turns looking at it.
**Security Council
The Security Council is holding consultations this morning on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.
Kenzo Oshima, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, introduced the Secretary-General’s report on the humanitarian implications of the measures imposed by the Security Council on Afghanistan. The report, as you will recall, came out as a document on the 13th of this month.
**Afghanistan
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found, in a survey of Afghans who have been repatriated to their homes, that
93 per cent of the returning Afghans were able to go back to their home villages. Of the small minority who told the UNHCR that they did not go back to their homes, many said they had found work elsewhere, or had found their land affected by landmines or drought.
A slim majority of the Afghans interviewed for the survey, that is, 51 per cent, said they had recovered their original homes and land, but 29 per cent reported that their homes had been completely destroyed.
Ahmed Said Farah, UNHCR's chief of mission for Afghanistan, said, "It is a good sign that a majority of the Afghans returned to their own homes and villages, but the situation inside Afghanistan continues to be critical." He noted that, among those who were interviewed, many reported limited access to services like health care and education.
We have a press release from the UNHCR on that subject, if you're interested.
**India/Pakistan
The Secretary-General has appointed Maj. Gen. Hermann K. Loidolt of Austria as the Chief Military Observer in the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, which we call UNMOGIP. General Loidolt is to succeed Maj. Gen. Manuel Saavedra of Uruguay, whose one-year term as Chief Military Observer expired on 10 July.
General Loidolt has served in the Austrian armed forces for more than
30 years, and is currently the Director of Information Technology Acquisition in the Ministry of Defence. In the 1970s, he also served in the Austrian Battalion of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golan Heights.
We have a press release with more biographical information in my Office, as well as the exchange of letters between the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council concerning the appointment.
**Small Arms Conference
The United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects again went into the night session last evening, as negotiations intensified on the revised Programme of Action.
Considerable progress has been made, they report, but there are still a number of paragraphs to be agreed on. The Conference will tackle those paragraphs today. Of course tomorrow, is the last day of the Conference.
Another gun sculpture exhibit will open today at the south end of the General Assembly Public Lobby. This exhibit, entitled “Transforming Arms into Ploughshares”, displays a number of small gun sculptures from Mozambique, including chairs that have been made from parts of guns that were used in that country's civil war. The exhibit is organized by the Christian Council of Mozambique and sponsored by the Mission of Mozambique and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), among others.
A ceremony to open the exhibit will take place at 1 p.m. today, and Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala will make a brief statement.
**Environment
The high-level segment of the resumed climate change talks began this afternoon in Bonn, Germany, with the President of the sixth session of the Conference, Jan Pronk, and others speaking at a brief ceremony.
Earlier this morning, the President had asked the co-chairs of the four negotiating groups that had been formed earlier this week to present their results so far, and received summaries that set out the options and remaining questions each group faced. Negotiations will now be taken up by the high-level officials, including some 85 ministers who have arrived in Bonn. The high-level negotiations are scheduled to begin this evening at 7 p.m. and to continue throughout the weekend.
**Civilians in Armed Conflict
Out on the racks today is a letter from the Secretary-General noting activities to follow up on the Security Council's practical steps about the protection of civilians in armed conflict.
In it, the Secretary-General agrees with the Council's suggestions on the need for close cooperation and joint strategic planning between the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. He says he has requested the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to develop operational procedures in cooperation with the Peacekeeping Department to enhance their cooperation.
He adds that he will report regularly to the Security Council on the status of initiatives concerning civilians in armed conflict, beginning this November.
**FAO
In Rome today, Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), gave a preview to the media of his message to the upcoming G-8 summit in Genoa, in which he urges world leaders to summon the necessary political will to increase investment in agriculture. He called for them to contribute to a $500-million Trust Fund for Food Security, which would be used to support agriculture in poor countries.
He also called for heads of State and government to participate in a session to be held in Rome from 5 through 9 November that will review progress in the five years since the World Food Summit.
**Budget
Payments: Today, Lithuania became the ninety-seventh Member State to pay its 2001 regular budget dues in full. That was with a payment of $175,000 plus.
**Press Conferences
Four press conferences; these are all tomorrow:
11:15 a.m. -- the Belgian Mission, on the subject of small arms. They'll give you the speaker's list later today.
12:45 p.m. -- Ambassador Camillo Reyes, the President of the Small Arms Conference.
2 p.m. -- the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). They will be sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and they too will confirm their speakers later today.
And then at 2:45 p.m. -- Michel Rocard, the Co-Chair of the Eminent Persons Group, sponsored by the French Mission. That too on small arms.
That's all I have for you.
**Questions and Answers
Richard, it's World No Tobacco Day. Did you know that?
Question: Let's hope it continues every day. Are you sure it's today?
Spokesman: I was told it was today, but I could be wrong.
Question: Maybe the smoke in the Building has clouded your thoughts. What are Secretary-General Annan's priorities when he comes back next week? Also, do you know his vacation plans, so that we can plan ours?
Spokesman: Let me see what I can tell you about vacation plans. He will be travelling in the month of August, in a mixture of official visits and some relaxation. We aren't ready to announce that trip yet, but that will take him roughly from the middle of August to the end of the first week of September. That'll be a three-week absence from Headquarters.
For next week, can you wait until tomorrow? We put together "The Week Ahead" on Friday. I'm not aware of any appointments of note for next week, but then we really haven't done our review yet.
Question: Has the G-8 talked about international observers going into the Middle East as part of the Mitchell plan?
Spokesman: I understand from press reports that the Foreign Ministers of the G-8, meeting in Rome, issued a statement this morning with all eight of them recommending, to the Israelis and the Palestinians, international monitors. But I can't confirm that; we didn't have anyone at that meeting. We just read it.
Question: Are there any updates on the investigation of the handling of the videotape from Lebanon by Joseph Connor, Under-Secretary-General for Management, including trips to the Middle East?
Spokesman: I have nothing new to add. I think two people left yesterday, I think that's what I announced, or was it the day before -- I've lost track. And Mr. Connor himself will go, although we're not going to announce the date of that, at least not today.
There's been some reporting on the purpose of the investigation being United Nations collaboration with Hezbollah. Please, that's not what this investigation is about. We said from the beginning that the Secretary-General, as a manager, wanted to know about the circumstances under which peacekeepers do filming of investigation sites, and the way that information moves up the chain of command. So those are the two major issues for us.
I subsequently said, as other allegations came out on this and the whole issue became hypersensitive, particularly in the region, that the terms of reference for the investigation were sufficiently broad to look into anything else that might come up. So if I could just correct the record there.
Otherwise, nothing new to report. Two weeks, approximately, is what we hope the whole thing will take.
Question: I keep hearing people say that the United States has not paid any of the money it promised; it's still being held up. Do you know the latest status -- of funds approved but not delivered?
Spokesman: I'd have to look into that. I know that once Mr. Connor finishes this investigation, he plans to go to Washington to see what he can do to shake loose some of the money pledged. But I can only tell you about what money we've received. Let me double-check and I'll squawk it right after. But we
announce any significant partial payments, as well as the full payments by Member States, and I haven't had anything to announce in a while. [After the briefing, the Spokesman confirmed that the funds in question had not been received.]
As far as the process goes, you'd have to ask the United States where things stand.
Thank you.
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