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

Good afternoon.  We told you we would be bringing back Caroline McAskie, the Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, as necessary, to brief you on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.  We thought today is a day when we would need her, and I thank her for coming.  We have also brought in Martin Barber, the head of the Mine-Action Service, in case you have questions about our ongoing demining activities in Afghanistan.  Martin will be coming up in a few minutes.

**The Secretary-General on Afghanistan

The Secretary-General spoke briefly at the Security Council stake-out this morning, after sitting in on the Council's consultations on Afghanistan.  He noted that Council members had raised the matter of the four Afghan aid workers, deminers, who died in the bombing last night, and Council members offered their deepest condolences.

He said that for the United Nations, "it's a hard blow", and added, "We've tried to take all the necessary precautions we can."  He noted that the parties undertaking the military operations in Afghanistan had given assurances that all efforts will be made to avoid civilian casualties.

Asked about the letter issued to the Security Council President yesterday by United States Ambassador John Negroponte, the Secretary-General said that one sentence in that letter, stating that the United States might have to go after other organizations and other States, had caused some "anxiety", he said, among other Member States.  He added the United States has indicated that this does not predict its intentions, but indicates that "they are at the early stages and keeping their options open".  He added, though, that "that is one line that disturbed some of us".

We hope to have the full transcript of what he said shortly.

**Afghanistan

The United Nations Regional Coordinator for Afghanistan, Michael Sackett, in Islamabad today, and the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kenzo Oshima, in the Security Council, appealed for the protection of civilians following the killing of four Afghan deminers.

According to Stephanie Bunker, the spokesperson for the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan, at 9 p.m. last night in Kabul, an office of the Afghan Technical Consultants (ATC) was hit and destroyed, killing four Afghan staff inside.  In addition, four ATC staff sustained minor injuries.  They were given first aid at local hospitals.

In Islamabad, Mike Sackett appealed to the international community for the obligation to protect innocent civilians while military strikes are going on. Through his spokesperson, he said, “People need to distinguish between combatants and those innocent civilians who do not bear arms.  They also need to be mindful of protecting assets essential for the survival of Afghan civilians.  Staff are clearly the most important resource the aid community in Afghanistan has.”

The ATC is one of the largest agencies involved in these kinds of mine- action activities.  There is more information on the agency in today’s briefing notes from Islamabad.

The World Food Programme (WFP) reported today that two convoys have arrived in the north-west and in Kabul, and a third is expected in Herat at the end of the week.  The WFP said there are convoys loaded and ready to move throughout the region and, as soon as the agency can secure drivers, it will resume trucking in food.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that the border with Pakistan remains closed, and noted reports of more civilians fleeing the cities of Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad.  However, it said there are no reports of large-scale movement towards the border.

And finally, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that a truck convoy would be sent from Iran into Herat.

**Security Council

In the Security Council's consultations this morning on Afghanistan, they heard, as we mentioned, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kenzo Oshima, who briefed them on the latest humanitarian relief efforts.  The Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Danilo Turk, was also present and would be taking any questions on political developments.

Council members are also expected to hold discussions on the election of a member of the International Court of Justice, or World Court, scheduled for this coming Friday.

For the record:  yesterday evening, at the end of consultations, the President of the Security Council, Ambassador Richard Ryan of Ireland, informed the press that the United States and United Kingdom delegations had told Council members about the action that had been initiated by their armed forces in Afghanistan.  Members of the Council were appreciative of the presentation by these two delegations. 

He said that members of the Council were deeply concerned at the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.  They also expressed appreciation for the humanitarian assistance being offered by many countries.

In a separate statement to the press, also yesterday evening, Ambassador Ryan said that members of the Security Council strongly condemned the attack against a United Nations helicopter in Abkhazia (Georgia) on Monday.  Members of the Council stressed that a speedy investigation was needed and that the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

The full texts of both those statements are available in my Office.

I also have to report, to correct, rather, a report by the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS out of Moscow, which quoted the United Nations Military Advisor, General Timothy Ford, as saying to troop contributors here at the United Nations yesterday, who the United Nations thinks is responsible for the downing of this United Nations helicopter.  General Ford did not say, in his meeting with the troop contributors, who he thought carried out this attack.  The text of his remarks to the troop contributors is available in my Office.

**Afghan Sanctions List

Out on the racks today, we have a press release with a list of names of

11 organizations and 13 individuals, as well as three companies, that the Security Council Sanctions Committee for Afghanistan added to its consolidated list of individuals and entities that are associated with Osama bin Laden.

You'll recall that in resolution 1333 passed in December of last year, the Council decided that all States should, without delay, freeze the funds and other financial assets of bin Laden and any entities and individuals associated with him, as designated by the Committee.  The Committee has twice before drawn up a list of such individuals and groups.

The new additions were approved by the Council Sanctions Committee, under the "no-objection" procedure, and that happened on Saturday, and the list includes the al-Qaida organization, as well as the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines, the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, the Harakat ul-Mujahidin of Kashmir, the Egyptian Islamic Movement and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, among others.

**Sudan

The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kenzo Oshima, today said he was deeply concerned at the three separate bombing raids that have taken place over the last four days in the village of Mangayat, in southern Sudan.  Those raids, he said, were conducted by Sudanese government forces and killed one civilian even as the United Nations was distributing food to internally displaced persons.

Oshima said, "I deplore in the strongest terms these military attacks on civilians who were gathering in one location to receive humanitarian assistance from the United Nations.  It is indefensible for any government or rebel movement to carry out military attacks whose victims will most probably be civilians and relief workers."

We have the full statement in my Office.

**International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia yesterday confirmed an indictment, filed two weeks ago by Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, charging former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of crimes allegedly committed in Croatia in 1991 and 1992.

Milosevic is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, for actions that allegedly include the murder of hundreds of Croat and non-Serb civilians and the deportation or forcible transfer of at least 170,000 Croats and non-Serbs.

Milosevic is already in detention at the Tribunal, having previously been charged for crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo in 1999.

We have a press release on that.

**Iraq ‘Oil-for-Food’ Programme

We also have the weekly update from the Office of the Iraq Programme, indicating that, under the programme, Iraq doubled its oil exports in the week ending on 5 October from the previous week’s total of 9 million barrels. Averaging 2.57 million barrels per day, the exports amounted to 18 million barrels.

Since the beginning of the programme on 10 December 1996, the Security Council’s 661 sanctions committee and the Office of the Iraq Programme have approved $28.7 billion worth of humanitarian supply contracts, of which over

$16 billion worth of supplies have been delivered to Iraq.

Another $12.7 billion are in the delivery and production pipeline, and the value of contracts placed on hold by the 661 Committee remains almost constant at $3.9 billion.

Also on Iraq, there will be a formal meeting of the 661 Sanctions Committee at 3:30 this afternoon in Conference room 7.  The Committee’s chairman, Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby of Norway, will be available to the press at the conclusion of the meeting.

**Town Hall Meetings

The Secretary-General has agreed to a proposal from the Better World Campaign aimed at enabling the United Nations to communicate directly with the American public on the current international crisis and the United Nations’ efforts on terrorism.  To do that, simultaneous meetings will be held in up to

10 cities around the United States on 11 October –- one month after the terrorist attacks -– on “The United States and the United Nations:  International Crisis ... International Response”.

Plans call for the first half hour to be national -– linked by satellite.  It is scheduled to start at 12 noon with Walter Cronkite, who will be here at United Nations Headquarters, asking the Secretary-General a couple of questions.  The Secretary-General will then take a question from people in each of the cities reached.

The remainder of the meetings will be separate and local, with a local moderator and panel in each city.  Each panel will include business and civic leaders, elected officials, youth, community leaders and clergy.  A senior representative from the United Nations will also be in each city -– so that the United Nations will be present in flesh and blood, and not only on the TV screen.

The cities selected are:  Seattle, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, Tampa, Atlanta, and Denver.  All travel and accommodation costs will be borne by the Better World Fund.

We have a press release on that.

**Convention on Climate Change

The seventh Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Climate Change will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from 29 October to 9 November.

This meeting will aim to translate the political principles reached at the Bonn meeting last July into a detailed operational rulebook.  Representatives gathered at the Marrakech meeting will also address how to increase the flow of financial and technological support to developing countries under the Climate Change Convention.

We have a press release on that.

**Signings and Ratifications

This morning, Han Seung-soo, Republic of Korea's Foreign Minister -- who, of course, is also the President of the General Assembly -– signed, on his country's behalf, the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. The Convention now has 58 signatories, and four of the 22 ratifications that it needs to come into force.

**Press Conferences

Tomorrow, the Department of Public Information (DPI) is sponsoring a press conference by Ian Kinniburgh, the Director of Development Policy Analysis, who will be presenting the report “A Brief Update of the Global Economic Outlook: Economic Implications of the 11 September Tragic Events”.  The report is embargoed until 5 p.m. New York time.

The Correspondents Association has asked me to tell you that there will be a briefing in the UNCA Club tomorrow at 2 p.m. on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and possible roles for the United Nations in that country.  The briefing will be given by Anna Cataldi and Professor Barnett Rubin.

Anna Cataldi, of course, is the journalist and human rights activist who is also one of the Secretary-General's Messengers of Peace.  And Professor Rubin is an expert on Afghanistan who is currently with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

As you can see from the Secretary-General's schedule today, he is seeing German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at 7 p.m.

The social event, that some of you know about, that was scheduled for 6:30 is, therefore, pushed back until 7:00, and the Secretary-General will get there as soon as he can.

[Later, it was announced that Chancellor Schroeder would be available for the press at the Secretariat Entrance stake-out following his meeting with the Secretary-General.]

That is all I have for you.  Anything for me before we go to Jan Fischer?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Who is responsible for the attack on the United Nations helicopter in Georgia that resulted in the death of nine people?  Do you have any new information on the investigation?

Spokesman:  I think you heard me say, there is no way the United Nations can know who did it, and I, therefore, denied the ITAR-TASS report that we had said who we had thought had done it.  We have no basis to know.

Question:  In the first reports on the bombing in Afghanistan, the four people killed were mentioned as security guards.  You said they were deminers.  Do we know what their function was, and has the United States have contact with the United Nations about those casualties?

Spokesman:  No, I am not aware that we’ve had any direct contact with the United States about these four.  I’ll defer to Martin Barber the question about what the four were doing.

Question:  There were reports that the office where these four were killed was near a radio antenna or a radio station, in other words, a potential strategic target.  Do you have any information on that?

Spokesman:  I don’t.  I don’t know whether you do, Martin [Barber}, if so you can address that later.  We don’t know what’s in the neighbourhood.

Okay, let us go quickly to Jan and then to Caroline.

Briefing by the Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly

Yes, I’ll be brief so we can go the Ms. McAskie and Mr. Barber.

Yesterday, the General Assembly elected five non-permanent members of the Security Council for a two-year term beginning on 1 January 2002.  The member states elected were:  Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and the Syrian Arab Republic.  After the election, I received quite a few questions from you and your colleagues regarding the voting procedure such as:  who did not vote, who voted against, why did candidate x only receive y number of votes when there was zero abstentions and 170-odd Members voting.  So I think I’ll just go very quickly over how it works.

The Member States were given three ballots, one for African-Asian States, one for Eastern European States, and one for Latin American and Caribbean States. The Member States themselves wrote in the names of the countries they wanted to vote for.  On the ballot for the African-Asian States, for example, some Member States chose to put only one or two names, which is why there was a disparity in the number of votes received by the candidates.  From this, it also follows that you cannot vote against a candidate.  We, of course, can’t say who did not vote or who voted for a certain candidate as the voting was done by secret ballot.  I hope this answers the questions that were raised yesterday.

That is all I am going to say now.  Any questions?

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