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, and Jan Fischer, Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly.
Briefing by the Spokesman for the Secretary-General
**United Nations Day
Good afternoon, and happy UN Day to everyone!
As you know, UN Day is celebrated on the 24th of October every year and, in his message, the Secretary-General said that this year is even more special as the Organization has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He urged the United Nations family “to stay true to our mission and to work harder than ever to alleviate suffering in every part of the world”. He added, “As the world confronts a new challenge, old ones remain. The United Nations is more central than ever to creating a better life and a safer world for all.” That message was issued as a press release, and it's also on our Web site.
To mark the occasion, there will be a concert in the General Assembly Hall this evening. It will feature an Indian rock band, Euphoria, and the Pakistani folk rock band, Junoon. And a rather unusual feature of this concert is that part of it will be silent, with the performance of French mime Marcel Marceau. The musical portion of the concert will be webcast live on the United Nations Web site at www.un.org/events/unday.
**OIOS
Our guest at the briefing today is Dileep Nair, the Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services. The annual report of his Office of Internal Oversight Services is out today, or will be shortly, and he's here with us today to talk to you about it. And we'll get to him in just a moment.
**Ismat Kittani
I have the following statement on the death of Ismat Kittani:
“Ismat Kittani was a cherished member of the United Nations family. He served five Secretaries-General with dedication and commitment. He performed many sensitive missions with the utmost skill and judgement. He was loved by those who knew him, and respected by all who came in contact with him.
“Both in the service of his country and as an official of the United Nations, including a distinguished term as President of the thirty-sixth General Assembly, he was a consummate diplomat, combining the discretion of the international civil servant with an intimate knowledge of the intergovernmental process.
“When he retired from the staff of the Organization, he said in his farewell remarks that no person is forced to work for the United Nations, that you do so because you believe in its goals. Ismat Kittani was someone who helped us all sustain that belief, and who made our work here even more rewarding. Today, my thoughts and prayers go to Ismat's family and his loved ones, I hope they will know that his life was an example to us all."
So that statement you can pick up in my Office.
**Afghanistan
On Afghanistan, elaborating on a report on the bombing strikes on Herat on Monday night and Tuesday morning, the UN humanitarian office for Afghanistan reports today that a mosque had been hit in the attack on a military compound in that city.
Also hit during those strikes was the village of Shaker Qala -– located between the military camp and the city, UN humanitarian spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told reporters in Islamabad earlier today. Yesterday morning, a group of people from that village arrived at the Mine Action Centre in Herat and said that many “bomblets” -– sub-munitions carried in cluster bombs -– were littering their village and that they were afraid to leave their houses.
The Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan said these bomblets are very dangerous and can explode if touched. About the size of a small soft drink can, they are bright yellow in color, and weigh about one and a half kilograms. There are normally as many as 200 of these bomblets in a cluster bomb.
The Mine Action Centre Quick Reaction Team in Herat is clearing paths for the villagers and sandbagging the devices. The Centre said it urgently requires information about the types of cluster munitions used so that they can get people to destroy these devices. The Centre is advising Afghan civilians not to touch any unfamiliar objects on the ground, and if possible to inform the nearest mine action centre so that the sites can be marked.
About 70 per cent of the population of Herat have reportedly fled the town.
Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it has signed agreements with 19 non-governmental organizations to distribute food in Afghanistan. The WFP also reports that over the past few days, it has been able to increase the amount of food carried in by convoys to a daily average of over 2,000 metric tons.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that site preparations and stockpiling continue in Pakistan and Iran.
On the political side, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, is continuing his consultations here in New York and is expected to start his visit to the region over the weekend. He'll be going to Pakistan and we believe also to Iran. As you’ll recall, he said yesterday that he intends to talk directly to as many Afghan parties as possible as part of his quest for a genuinely “home-grown” arrangement.
**Middle East
The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East, Terje-Roed Larsen, met today in Gaza with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, who informed him of an Israeli Defence Force incursion into and around the West Bank village of Beit Rima, in a Palestinian-controlled area north of Ramallah.
It is difficult to obtain information about the situation in this village as the Israeli operation is ongoing, but our office in Gaza says that at least nine Palestinians have been confirmed killed, and many others are reported injured. The Palestinians report a death toll of at least 15.
Arafat also informed Larsen of fierce fighting going on now in Bethlehem.
**Security Council
The Security Council is holding an open meeting on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the DRC, Amos Namanga Ngongi, introduced the Secretary-General’s report on the UN Mission in that country and updated Council members on the latest developments there.
He said that the UN Mission is investigating as a matter of urgency the reports of movements of both Rwandan and Ugandan troops in the vicinity of the town of Kanyabayongo in northern Kivu. A team of observers has already been sent to the scene and two more teams will be sent tomorrow. All parties are cooperating with the UN Mission and no fighting is reported.
In addition to also updating Council members on the inter-Congolese dialogue, he said that this morning the UN Mission sent another team to Kamina, in the eastern part of the country, to continue efforts to demobilize and repatriate the 3,000 Rwandan former combatants said to be there.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the DRC, Leonard She Okitundu, also took the floor. Council members are expected to address the meeting, as are the representatives of Belgium, Namibia, Zambia and Mozambique.
A presidential statement is expected to be adopted at the end of the meeting.
I would also like to bring to your attention the fact that out on the racks today is a letter from the Permanent Representative of the DRC, Ambassador Ileka Atoki, with the position of his Government regarding the inter-Congolese dialogue meeting that was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last week.
**Security Council-Tuesday
The Security Council yesterday afternoon met to consider a letter from the Ambassadors of Mali and Qatar, requesting the convening of “an immediate meeting of the Security Council” to deal with the question of Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian areas.
Council members discussed the issue, but did not come to any decision yesterday on holding such a meeting. Instead, Council members are staying informed of developments on the ground, and Council President Richard Ryan of Ireland will continue to consult with Council members on possible Security Council action in the coming days.
**ICTY
Yugoslav General Pavle Strugar will make his initial appearance before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) tomorrow, after having turned himself in voluntarily on Sunday.
The Tribunal, in its indictment against Strugar and three co-accused, charged him with -- in 1991, when he was a Yugoslav Army Commander -- having committed war crimes, including murder and attacks on civilians, conducted in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in October of that year. The charges against Strugar and his co-accused were detailed in a press release from the Tribunal, which we put out yesterday afternoon.
**UNDP
UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Mark Malloch Brown started an official visit to the United Kingdom today, meeting this morning with Clare Short, the Secretary of State and head of the UK Department for International Development.
Malloch Brown addressed the Department’s staff on issues such as the "new UNDP", reports on millennium development goals and coordination of UN activities. He also met with other government officials and business leaders. He will return to New York tomorrow.
**Signings
A couple of signings to bring to your attention today.
This morning, the Holy See ratified both Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Optional Protocol on children and armed conflict now has seven parties, with three more needed for it to enter into force, and the Optional Protocol on the sale of children now has 11 parties.
Also this morning, Liechtenstein became the twenty-eighth country to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
**United Nations 21 Awards
The United Nations 21 Awards for the year 2000 will be presented by the Secretary-General tomorrow to 66 awardees in five teams.
The awards were introduced in 1996 by the Secretary-General as part of management reform to recognize outstanding achievements in improving the efficiency, effectiveness, quality and impact of the Organization’s activities. At tomorrow’s ceremony, the award will be given to the Integrated Management Information System team (37 awardees), the team for Improvements to the United Nations Guided Tour Programme (2 awardees), the Archive and Records Management Service (11 awardees), the Rules Streamlining Project (11 awardees), and the Automated System of the Interpretation Service project (5 awardees).
**Press Conferences
Press conferences, one more today at 1:15 p.m. Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino of the Holy See Mission, who will be joined by Olara Otunnu, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, and they will be briefing on the Optional Protocol on Child Soldiers.
**UNCA Awards
And hats off if I may, to the members of the United Nations Correspondents Association, who won awards for their work at the dinner last night. NHK won the first prize award, our own Edith Lederer of Associated Press got a second place award. And our former BBC bureau chief here, Mark Devenport, shared an award with Rachel Hooper for a project of theirs. So congratulations to the three of you.
That’s all I have. Anything before we go to Jan Fischer?
**Questions and Answers
Question: Have there been any recent telephone call between the Secretary-General and President Bush on the United Nations role in Afghanistan, or anthrax or anything?
Spokesman: I haven't heard, but I did not check this morning on the phone log, so I'll have to do that for you right after the briefing.
Question: Any phone calls that he's done regarding the Middle East?
Spokesman: I'll have to check the phone log for you. [He later said there were no phone calls today in either subject.]
Ok, Jan?
Briefing by the Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly
Good afternoon.
**General Assembly Today
In his UN Day message, General Assembly President Han Seung-Soo says, among other things, that "As we learned so painfully in the 20th century, and now in the 21st, the moral advancement of mankind can never be taken for granted. It is always a work in progress, and never a final accomplishment. Even as the great majority of human beings seek to improve the conditions of life on this planet, there remains a small minority intent on sabotaging and, if possible, reversing, our slow but steady progress. We saw them in action on the 11th of September. But let us remember that their capacity for evil is infinitesimally smaller than humanity's collective capacity for good."
The full text is available upstairs. The President is currently meeting with the President of the Economic and Social Council, Ambassador Belinga-Eboutou. They are discussing the ECOSOC report, and ways to improve or strengthen the Council.
He will then have a working luncheon with the Chairs of the Main Committees, and at 3 o'clock he will meet with the Chairman and the Vice-Chairs of the Counter Terrorism Committee. And at 4 p.m., he will meet with Dr. Perera who's the Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on international terrorism. At 5 o'clock, he will see Ambassador Bustani, who is the Director General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
All of those meetings are at the request of the other parties. Just like the Secretary-General, the President will be attending the United Nations Day celebrations in the GA Hall tonight, and he will make some remarks. That’s what I have for you today.
Any questions for Jan?
**Questions and Answers
Question: Has it been decided how the United Nations will distribute the Nobel Prize?
Spokesman for the Secretary-General: No. Clearly, the award is in two parts, and we assume the Secretary-General will have discretion over his half. There's a lot of thought being given now as to how that might be spent in the most productive way. The other half of the award is still being decided. The letter from the Nobel Committee said that they were giving the award also to the United Nations “as such”, so we have our legal beagles looking at the text of the letter. We'll be talking with the rest of the United Nations, mainly the other five principal organs, to decide how to handle the division of the prize between the Secretary-General and the United Nations “as such”.
Question: The UN reports on the damage done to a mosque and things like that. What defines what the United Nations reports as having being hit in terms of a military conflict? Are they reporting a mosque because there are civilians in there? Should they also be reporting what was hit elsewhere in the country, military targets? When it gets reported like that, it seems like the UN is taking sides.
Spokesman for the Secretary-General: No, these reports come out of our office in Islamabad, which is the closest that we are to Afghanistan. There is a coordinated information service there involving the various UN agencies, the refugee agency and the WFP. These agencies have people going in and out of Afghanistan, delivering food. The High Commissioner for Refugees is interviewing refugees as they come out of Afghanistan. From these sources, we get bits and pieces of information, and I think you'd prefer it if we shared these with you, rather than we sat on them. So we do a daily briefing from Islamabad. Much of the information we give you here comes from Islamabad.
Before we start, if I can just delay you one minute more. We were expecting a statement on the situation in the Middle East, and I now have it.
**Middle East
“The Secretary-Generalis very disturbed to learn that, in spite of international calls on Israel to withdraw its armed forces from Palestinian- controlled areas in the West Bank, Israel has instead intensified its occupation of those areas.
“The Secretary-General is especially concerned about reports from the village of Beit Rima, where Israeli forces have launched a major assault today resulting in substantial loss of life. The Secretary-General calls on Israel to cease this attack immediately, to withdraw all its forces from area A and also to ensure that Palestinian ambulances and ICRC personnel have full access to the wounded in the village.
“The Secretary-General reiterates that this further dangerous escalation, quite apart from being a breach of signed agreements, only deepens the cycle of violence in the region, where tensions are already at boiling point.
“The Secretary-General remains convinced that there is no alternative to a negotiated political solution to this conflict, and he strongly urges the parties to return to this path.”
**Questions and Answers
Question: Just on that last statement, there's a line in there that calls on Israel to allow the ICRC and Palestinian ambulances to tend to the wounded. What brings the Secretary-General to make a statement like that? Is there evidence that Israel is not allowing ambulances?
Spokesman: I have no guidance on that. You saw this piece of paper was handed to me in the course of this briefing, so all I have at this time is this statement.
[He later said that the Palestinian Authority had complained of severe restrictions on ambulances of the ICRC.]
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