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 Jan Fischer, Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly.

Briefing by the Spokesman for the Secretary-General

      I don’t know why we’re so popular today.  Good Afternoon.

**Afghanistan

From Islamabad, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says it’s using this period of relative calm to prepare for a possible exodus of Afghan refugees.  Some 28 sites have now been identified for camps inside Pakistan.  Preparations began this morning at the Malkano site in the remote Khyber area.  Work on new camps is also ongoing in Pakistan’s Baluchistan and North West Frontier provinces.

Today in Rome, Catherine Bertini, the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), appealed to the international community to respond generously to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries.  The WFP food deliveries currently average about

500 metric tons per day, enough for about 1 million people.  The agency aims to increase the food distribution so as to cover the needs of 6 million Afghans.  Conditions inside the country are deteriorating fast, Bertini said.  “We face a vast food crisis as a result of three years of festering drought and ongoing civil war”, she added.  “For example, in the northern provinces of Balkh and Faryab we estimate 400,000 people will run out of their own food stocks as well as international relief supplies this week.”

This morning, the Security Council warmly welcomed the reappointment by the Secretary-General of Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi as his Special Representative for Afghanistan.  The Council said that his appointment should provide a powerful injection to United Nations efforts to resolve the crisis in that country.  Ambassador Brahimi will have the overall authority for the humanitarian and political activities of the United Nations in Afghanistan.

An international forum on Afghan refugees and displaced populations will open in Geneva tomorrow in the presence of Ruud Lubbers, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Kenzo Oshima, as well as Ambassador Brahimi.  The forum aims to bring together key donors, asylum governments and aid agencies to discuss the immediate humanitarian crisis and future strategies for managing Afghan refugees and population displacement.

We have press releases in my office, if you’re interested.

**Japan Contribution

Japan announced that it will contribute 20 per cent of the total of the donor alert for Afghanistan launched by the Secretary-General last Thursday.  The Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs thanks the Government of Japan for its contribution.  We expect to have for you tomorrow a breakdown of how much money has been collected to date and how it will be used.  You will recall that the total request was for $584 million.  Japan said it would pay up to

$120 million of that.

**Secretary-General

As you saw in the Secretary-General’s programme, he’s meeting now, as we speak, with chief executive officers and senior executives of seven of the world's leading research-based pharmaceuticals.  The meeting follows on an earlier meeting held in Amsterdam in April of this year.  In today’s session, they’re expected to focus on the access to drugs, particularly in the least developed countries, reduced drug prices, improvement of health systems infrastructure and the participation of the private sector in helping to raise resources for the global fight against HIV/AIDS.

Meanwhile, today, in Melbourne, Australia, UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, issued a press release which cautions that AIDS will spread in Asia unless rapid action is taken.  The press release comes from a UNAIDS report for the sixth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, which starts tomorrow.  We have that press release if you’re interested.

**Security Council

The Security Council held consultations this morning to go over the Committee established under resolution 1373 on terrorism, which was adopted last Friday.  Council members agreed to elect Jeremy Greenstock, the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom, to the position of Chairman of the Committee.  In addition, the following have been elected as Vice-Chairmen:  Alfonso Valdivieso, Permanent Representative of Colombia; Jagdish Koonjul, Permanent Representative of Mauritius; and Sergey Lavrov, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation.  The 1373 Committee started its first meeting immediately following this morning’s consultations.  Committee members were briefed by the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Kieran Prendergast.

**Kosovo

The Secretary-General, in his latest report on the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo, UNMIK), which is out on the racks today, notes the Mission's intensive work to prepare for Kosovo-wide elections on 17 November.  He says that 33 political entities applied for certification over the summer, including 27 political parties, and that a special task group with five mobile teams was set up by the United Nations mission to reach out to Kosovo Serbs prior to the elections.  He says that despite progress in strengthening law and order in Kosovo, continuing inter-ethnic violence and criminal activity remain a major concern.

The Secretary-General adds, "This is a defining moment for Kosovo, and I call on all political leaders and representatives of civil society to ensure that the upcoming election campaign is free of violence."  He welcomes the special emphasis that the mission has given to encourage minority communities, especially the Kosovo Serbs, to participate in public life, and called on the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, also, to encourage Kosovo Serbs to vote.  The Security Council will hold a public meeting on Kosovo tomorrow, and the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Kosovo, Hans Haekkerup, is to address the Council.

**Lebanon

Today in Lebanon, the Secretary-General's Personal Representative for Southern Lebanon, Staffan de Mistura, met with Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud and afterward issued a statement urging all parties to exercise maximum restraint at the "Blue Line".  De Mistura noted yesterday's attack by Hezbollah, and subsequent shelling by the Israeli Defence Force at the Shebaa Farms along the Blue Line, as well as 12 recorded Israeli overflights across the line.  There were no reported injuries in the shelling.  In his statement, de Mistura called for the cessation of all provocative actions and reiterated the need to respect the Line.  There are copies of his statement in my office.

**The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

We also have a statement attributable to the Spokesman, in my office, saying that there was another round of talks between Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, that was held today under the Secretary-General’s auspices, and chaired by his Personal Envoy, Mathew Nimetz.  And they agreed to meet again at a date to be decided.

**World Health Organization Report

The World Health Organization (WHO) today launched its World Health Report, titled "Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope", which looks at depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and several other mental disorders and contains 10 recommendations for action.  The Secretary-General, in a message issued on today's launch, says it is time for governments to make mental health a priority, and to allocate the resources, develop the policies and implement the reforms needed to address this urgent problem.  One in four persons, he notes, will suffer from mental illness at some time in life.   We have copies of his message in my office and the WHO report is available on their Web site, which is www.who.int.

**Goodwill Ambassador for Ageing

The Infanta Doña Cristina of Spain has been appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Second World Assembly on Ageing, which is to be held in Madrid from 8 to 12 April 2002.  Her mission will be to promote the World Assembly and its goal of developing an international strategy to deal with global population ageing.  The announcement of her appointment was made this morning as the International Day of Older Persons was commemorated, in an event held outside the Building, at the offices of the American Association of Retired Persons. Marcel Marceau, who is also a Goodwill Ambassador for the Second World Assembly on Ageing, spoke at the event, and will meet with the Secretary-General at 3 p.m. today.  We have press releases on the racks on the appointment of the Princess and on today's observance of the Day.

**Signings

This morning, the United Kingdom deposited its instrument of ratification for the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.  That brings to 42 the number of ratifications out of the 60 needed to bring it into force.

Also today, the Republic of Korea signed the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, concerning the manufacturing and trafficking of firearms.

Also today, Azerbaijan and Poland signed the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.  And Poland also signed two protocols that supplement the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, one on the trafficking of persons and the other on the smuggling of migrants.

**Noon Guest

Our guest at the noon briefing tomorrow will be Ellen Johnson Surley, who was part of a team of independent experts put together by UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), which has been conducting an assessment of the impact of war on women, and women’s role in peace-building.  The team has been travelling to East Timor, Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  And then we expect Hans Haekkerup, the Special Representative for Kosovo, to discuss his briefing to the Council, following that briefing.

That’s all I have for you.  Any questions before we go to Jan?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Could we have the names of the pharmaceutical companies the Secretary-General is consulting today?

Spokesman for the President:  Abbott Laboratories, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, F. Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck and Company, and Pfizer.

Question:  Do you have any information on the effects that the events of

11 September have had on the campaign in the fight against AIDS?  I mean, so much money has been raised for the victims of 11 September.  Surely that must have affected how much money was available for the Secretary-General’s AIDS campaign.

Spokesman for the Secretary-General:  It’s true we haven’t had contributions recently.  I think probably 11 September has distracted everyone, focused everyone’s attention on terrorism.  It also had a very negative effect on the global economy.  Our expectation is, though, that once the Fund is established and its terms of reference formalized, and that will happen by the end of this year, we’ll see a new surge of pledges to the Fund.

Question:  The United Nations is working hard to assist the people distressed in Afghanistan.  What are the steps being taken to bring peace and security back to Afghanistan?

Spokesman for the President:  We’d have to write a book to answer that question.  We did brief you yesterday on the current status of the humanitarian effort and I updated you on that this morning.  There have been a number of political developments of interest I mentioned this morning.  The naming of Lakhdar Brahimi, for one, and the Security Council’s action to name a Chair and Vice-chairs of this Committee that will monitor countries’ follow-up to the Security Council resolution of last Friday.  The United Nations Secretariat is in the process of retooling itself to back up Mr. Brahimi and to provide the Committee, this newly formed Committee of the Council, with the technical support it needs.

This is in an area where we frankly have no expertise, so it’s a new area for all of us.  I think you see the whole United Nations system scrambling to configure itself, bring in new resources and new forms of expertise to work with governments to deal with the terrorism issue on the one hand.  And then, on the humanitarian side, scrambling to put into place enough relief supplies to deal with the worst-case scenario in Afghanistan, should it develop, which would involve feeding and caring for some seven-and-a-half million people.

Question:  The word “scrambling” implies that the United Nations is caught somewhat unawares.  Surely the United Nations had anticipated problems in Afghanistan for a long time?

Spokesman for the Secretary-General:  Well, I’m talking about the political side now.  The Security Council specifically asked us to back up this Committee.  We immediately moved to do that.  The Department of Political Affairs set up a task force yesterday to back up Mr. Brahimi, and the task force began meeting immediately.  So “scrambling” doesn’t necessarily imply “caught unawares”, but it means responding quickly to a new mandate.  That’s the sense in which I meant it.

Question:  Where will Mr. Brahimi have his headquarters?

Spokesman for the Secretary-General: He’ll be headquartered here in

New York.

Briefing by the Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly

Good afternoon.  I don’t have much for you today, so I’m mainly here to take any questions you may have.  But let me say that the General Assembly debate started today with Ghana, and at that time we had 73 speakers left on the list.  Since we’ve been hearing an average of about 32 speakers per day, we have to have an evening session today in order to finish tomorrow.  At the moment, I don’t know if the plenary will briefly recess at 6 o’clock or just continue, possibly until

9 o’clock.

This morning at 9, the President met with the participants in DPI’s (Department of Public Information) training programme for Broadcasters and Journalists from Developing Countries.  At 11:30 he attended a briefing on the ICT (Information Communications Technology) Task Force, whereupon he met with Ambassador Durant of Jamaica (Chairperson of the Preparatory Committee) regarding potential dates for the Special Session on Children.  At 1:15, he’ll have a working luncheon with the Chairmen of the Regional Groups and at 3 he’ll be back in the General Assembly Hall.

Question:  Do we have a likely date yet for the Special Session on Children?

Spokesman for the President:  That’s still being discussed and that’s what the President will discuss with Ambassador Durant, as well.

Question:  But it will be some time next year?

Spokesman for the President:  Most of the dates I’ve heard are next year, yes.

Question:  I’d like to clarify something on the Sixth Committee (Legal) --the two draft conventions.  That’s the responsibility of the ad hoc committee and it’s on the schedule of the Committee.  When the Committee takes it up, is that the ad hoc committee as well, or is the ad hoc committee going to be meeting separately?  I’m trying to get an idea of whether we’ve got two meetings we’re trying to keep track of, or one.

Spokesman for the President:  The ad hoc committee is a committee that’s under the Sixth Committee.  It uses the same officials and representatives and so on.  You may wish to double-check that on the United Nations Web site under international law.  They will start on 15 October as scheduled and they’ll go on until 26 October.  And I should mention, that’s on two of the major issues, the nuclear terrorism convention and the comprehensive convention on terrorism.

Question:  Is that two separate meetings or still only one?

Spokesman for the President: I think the ad hoc committee uses the same officials basically as the Sixth Committee.  You have at the moment also the Commission on the International Criminal Court going on, and that also uses basically the same officials as the Sixth Committee.

Spokesman for the Secretary-General: For one meeting, not two, right?

Spokesman for the President: Yes.

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