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

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

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 of the Secretary-General

Good morning

**Afghanistan

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, met for nearly an hour this morning with the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf.  Francesc Vendrell, the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for Afghanistan, also participated in that meeting.

The President reaffirmed that the United Nations has a central role to play in the urgent effort to assist the Afghan people.  The President and Mr. Brahimi agreed on the principles that must guide the resolution of the conflict.  This includes the fact that the unity of Afghanistan and its territorial integrity must be preserved.  They also agreed that a broad-based, multi-ethnic and fully representative Government must come into power, and the political dispensation must be home-grown and fully owned by the people of Afghanistan.

Mr. Brahimi met today with various Afghan leaders, including Pir Syed Gailani and members of his National Islamic Front of Afghanistan.  He was to meet with Gen. Rahim Wardak, a former chief of the staff of the Afghan Army.  And this evening he had a working dinner with Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan.

Mr. Brahimi said today, “One of the key aspects at present is that we don’t see a formula emerging yet where those who are holding the gun will stop holding the rest of the country hostage”.

In response to a question posed by CNN upon his arrival this morning about whether members of the Taliban should be part of any new government, the Secretary-General said the composition is a decision for the Afghans to make.  The transcript of those remarks are available in my office.

Also in Islamabad today, the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, met with President Musharraf and was scheduled to meet with the Taliban representative in Pakistan.

In meetings with Pakistani officials to date, the High Commissioner has repeatedly urged Afghanistan’s neighbours to open their borders to fleeing Afghans, particularly vulnerable people and those fleeing forced conscription.

UNHCR also reported today that thousands of refugees are crossing into

Pakistan, mostly through unofficial border crossings since only the sick, the wounded and the frail are allowed to cross officially.   According to UNHCR, the overall figure of Afghans who have fled to Pakistan since September 11th remains unknown but various estimates put it at more than 100,000.

In a communication we just received from UNHCR, Afghan refugees arriving in Pakistan say the health situation in the make-shift Taliban-controlled camp at Spin Boldak inside Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly.  Those interviewed by UNHCR allege that the Taliban are preventing people from leaving Afghanistan, including those in need of urgent medical attention.

The World Food Programme said in the last two months, more than 32,000 tons of food had been distributed to some 2 million people in Afghanistan, but that represented one third of the needs.  Insecurity and a lack of trucks, fuel and personnel were hampering the distribution of the food supplies. 

On the eve of Halloween, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that children in the United States, Canada and Ireland would collect donations to help save the lives of children in Afghanistan.  As you know, children collect change in little orange cardboard boxes provided by UNICEF every Halloween.

**Secretary-General in Geneva

Just a reminder that the Secretary-General is leaving for Geneva tonight, where he will address the Global Employment Forum of the International Labour Organization on Thursday morning.

On Friday, he will be meeting with United Nations staff in Geneva, and he will return to New York on Saturday.

**Secretary-General meetings

As we speak, the Secretary-General is meeting with the heads of the principle organs of the United Nations.  Those are the General Assembly, the Security Council, The Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council and the International Court of Justice.  The Secretariat of course is the sixth.

The main focus of the meeting is to be an exchange of ideas on the UN organization’s half of the Nobel Peace Prize, especially on how the UN is to be represented at the awards ceremony in Oslo in December.

This is the third such meeting of its kind.  The first occurred in 1998 and another one followed in 1999.  Not all on the Nobel Prize, obviously.

** Security Council

This morning the Security Council held an Arria Formula meeting to mark the first anniversary of resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

Ambassador Patricia Durrant of Jamaica organized the meeting for Council Members to hear from a group of women peace leaders on violations committed against women during and after conflicts.  The group –- with women from Afghanistan, East Timor and Kosovo -- also spoke about the role of women in peace negotiations and peacekeeping efforts.  International experts Elisabeth Rehn, a former UN Under-Secretary General, and Maha Muna, from the NGO Working Group on Women, International Peace and Security also participated in the debate.

At a press conference chaired by Noeleen Heyser, Executive Director of the United Nations Fund for Women, here in 226 at 1:15 p.m., the women peace leaders will also talk to you.  For more information, we have a press release upstairs.

Going back to the Security Council’s programme for today:  this afternoon, at 3:00 p.m., the Council will have a private meeting on Georgia.  The Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Dieter Boden, will brief.  In addition to Council members, the representatives of Georgia and the European Union are expected to take the floor.

At the end of that meeting, Dieter Boden will come to the second floor stakeout to speak to the press.

Also following the private meeting, Council members will hold closed consultations on Somalia to review a draft presidential statement on the situation in that country.

**Liberia Sanctions

The Security Council has received the report by the independent five-member panel dealing with Liberia sanctions, which recommends extending the arms embargo and rough diamond sanctions on Liberia and further recommends that the United Nations impose a ban on all round log exports from Liberia, starting from July 2002.

The panel, chaired by Martin Chungong Ayafor of Cameroon, adds that, given progress by Liberia in addressing irregularities among its registered aircraft, the Security Council may consider lifting its order, in Resolution 1343 (2001), to ground Liberian aircraft.

Yet the panel finds that despite some progress, a steady flow of new weapons has continued to enter Liberia in violation of United Nations sanctions.  The report says that timber production, an important source of revenue for the Government, has also been a source of revenue for sanctions-busting.

It adds that Liberia’s maritime registry has generated funds for opaque off-budget expenditures, including sanctions-busting.  Consequently, the panel suggests that the Security Council’s Sanctions Committee for Liberia set up an escrow account as the ultimate destination for all revenues generated from the country’s shipping and corporate registry.

The report should come out shortly on the racks and on the Council’s web site for sanctions, but in the meantime, we have some copies available in my office.

**Iraq

According to the weekly update from the Office of the Iraq Programme, the Security Council’s 661 Iraq sanctions committee last week approved retroactively the Iraqi oil pricing mechanisms for deliveries to the United States market for the month of October.

In terms of Iraq’s weekly oil exports under the United Nations oil-for-food programme, at an average rate of just over 2.1 million barrels a day, the exports totaled 14.9 million barrels.

So far in current phase X of the programme, which ends on the 30th of November, Iraqi oil deliveries have amounted to 226 million barrels, for an estimated revenue of 4.25 billion dollars.  The mission of Norway, which chairs the 661 committee informs us that the committee's next formal meeting will take place on the 6^th of November during which the committee will be briefed by the United States Navy Admiral Charles Moore, who heads the Multinational Interception Force, which operates in the Gulf.

At that meeting members will also discuss the alleged violations of the embargo committed by the tanker “TT Essex” in May and August this year as reported to the committee by the Executive Director of the Office of the Iraq programme in a letter dated 24 October.  As usual, the committee's chairman, Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby, will brief the press at the conclusion of the meeting.  

**Ethiopia-Eritrea

Yesterday in Djibouti, the Force Commander of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, chaired the ninth meeting of the Military Coordination Commission, which brings together senior military officials from those two countries.

He congratulated Ethiopia and Eritrea on 16 months of relative stability in their common border area, and appealed to both sides to continue to ensure that their armed forces do not patrol forward to the southern boundary of the Temporary Security Zone, the buffer zone monitored by the United Nations.

The commission noted the challenges the United Nations Mission has faced, including restrictions on the peacekeepers’ freedom of movement, particularly during their monitoring of the Eritrean Defence Forces where they are redeployed.

We have more details of yesterday’s meeting in a press release.

**Sierra Leone

The United Force Commander for the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, Lt. Gen. Daniel Opande, yesterday witnessed the disarmament of Revolutionary United Front (RUF) combatants in the town of Kamakwie, a longtime RUF-held zone in the district of Bombali.

More than 100 RUF fighters turned in their weapons to United Nations and Opande, in an address to the local community, reminded them that he had fulfilled his promise to deploy United Nations troops to Kamakwie so that they could provide security during and after the disarmament exercise.

There is more in today's briefing notes.

**International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Today at The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia held a conference on the status of the case involving former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who, you’ll recall, appeared before the Tribunal yesterday to hear new charges against him involving crimes allegedly committed in Croatia.

At today’s status conference, the Tribunal determined that the trial Milosevic faces on charges of crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo in 1999 will begin early next year, on February 12.

**Panel on Women, Security and Peace

The United Nations Inter-agency Taskforce on Women, Security and Peace will hold a panel discussion this afternoon in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Chamber starting at 1:15.  Included on the panel are Brian Cowan, the Irish Foreign Minister and President of the Security Council, Angela King, the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, Kieran Prendergast, the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jayantha Dhanapala, the Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, and Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for East Timor.  That is quite a panel.

**Press Releases and Reports

Press releases today -- on the racks today is the Secretary-General’s report on inter-organizational security matters, which calls for the establishment of a post at the Assistant Secretary-General level for the coordination of United Nations security.  The report also suggests that the estimates for the Office of the United Nations Security Coordinator for the biennium 2002-2003, which stands at more than $53 million, be shared among participating organizations.

Then the United Nations Environment Programme announced today in a press release that the Global Forum for Sport and Environment will be held in Tokyo on the 1st and 2nd November.  A global movement to encourage those involved in all areas of sport, from fans to sponsors, to support and participate in environmental programmes will be launched during that Forum. 

We have a press release on that.

**Signings

Some signings today, the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism will get two more signatures today.  Japan signed this morning and Colombia will sign this afternoon bringing the number of signatories to 69.

And then the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, better known as the Aarhus Convention, enters into force today.  The Convention aims at providing members of the public with greater access to environmental information from public authorities and to express their opinions and concerns on environmental matters.  A ceremony was held this morning in Geneva to mark the occasion.  The full text of the Convention and the status of ratification are available on the Economic Commission for Europe’s website, www.unece.org.

**World Chronicle Programmes

Two World Chronicle Programmes to mention today, the first is with Marcel Marceau, a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Second World Assembly on Ageing.  That will be aired at 3:30 p.m. today on in-house TV-channels 3 and 34.  And then a second programme featuring Sakiko Fukuda-Parr of the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report will be aired at 4:00 p.m.

**Press Conferences

Press conferences today, at 12:45 p.m. here in this room, Nitin Desai, the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, will brief you on the "The Road to Johannesburg -- the World Summit on Sustainable Development", and he will be accompanied by the five chairpersons of the regional roundtables of that Summit.  

And then at 1:15 p.m., the women peace leaders that I mentioned to you will be here.

And our guest at tomorrow's noon briefing will be Kenzo Oshima, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who is just back from a visit to the region.  And there are no other press conferences scheduled for tomorrow.

Any questions before we go to Jan?  Betsy?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Since the Council is taking up women in peace-building, I am wondering, has the Secretary-General or Mr. Brahimi mentioned the role of women in re-building Afghanistan?

Spokesman:  There has been a considerable amount of discussion on that subject.  Mr. Brahimi met with a number of women ambassadors before he left for Afghanistan.  That meeting was organized again by Ambassador Durrant.  So he has had some personal contact.  And there has been discussion in the Secretary-General's morning meetings on Afghanistan of the need to keep women's issues at the front of our minds as we look at this issue of a broad-based, fully representative government for Afghanistan.

Question:  I have two questions.  You mentioned that the Taliban regime is forbidding refugees to enter somewhere.  Where was this, to Pakistan or Iran?  The second question concerns Milosevic not recognizing the International Court.  What is the reaction to this by the Security Council?

Spokesman:  First, I just reported that some refugees coming into Pakistan from Afghanistan were reporting that other Afghans were being prevented from leaving by the Taliban.  So you can take that for what it is worth.  The Security Council, that I am aware, has not made any reaction or given any reaction to Mr. Milosevic's comments yesterday, the disparaging comments about the Tribunal. 

Question:  Taking women's issues in Afghanistan, I assume that they will be given the vote.  When they are given the vote, will they be able to vote in such a way that the voting places are supervised by an international team of some kind so that they will not be punished if they don't vote the right way? 

Spokesman:  I think that you are a little ahead of where we are.  What we are saying is that we want Afghans to agree on a government.  We would be advising them on international standards for that government.  I think it would be safe to assume that universal suffrage would be one of those principles we would be advising them to adopt.  When elections actually occur, whether or not there would be United Nations supervision, that certainly is within the realm of possibility, but we are not anywhere near this possibility as yet. 

Question:  I understand that Mr. Alkatiri, the head of the East Timorese government, is here and that he had a meeting with the Secretary-General yesterday.  Could you confirm that?

Spokesman:  We published the appointments of the Secretary-General.  I can't recall if that was one of the appointments yesterday.  It is easy enough to find out.  Yes he is here.  If you check with me right after the briefing, we will confirm it for you. 

Question:  You mentioned earlier the establishment of a new post for a Security Coordinator, would you just elaborate a little bit on that, on the responsibilities?

Spokesman:  That is by now a relatively long-standing recommendation of the Secretary-General to improve the United Nations' security apparatus.  He feels that there should be a separate post at the level of Assistant Secretary-General to oversee all United Nations security matters and that there should be a beefing-up of the Security Unit.  We are not talking about guards here, but the people who deal with security matters in the field.  And the price tag for that is some $53 million.  And since the security arrangements cover not just United Nations personnel, Secretariat personnel, but also United Nations agency personnel, his recommendation is that the Agencies should somehow share in this cost.  So if you get that report that I mentioned today that is out on the racks, that will give you all the details.   

Question:  Any response from the Secretary-General's office on the report from the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights yesterday suggesting that some kind of peace-keeping or monitoring force in Israel?

Spokesman:  No I don't think we would comment on a rapporteurs' recommendation.  The Secretary-General is working on the Middle East rather quietly and behind the scenes.  The issue of monitors or observers, of course, is one of the most sensitive, since Israel has rejected that as an option, while a number of the international actors including the European Union and the Secretary-General himself have talked of the utility of third-party actors as part of any agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians to try to get the peace-process re-started.  But on this specific topic he has no reaction. 

Ok, Jan?

Briefing by the Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly

Thank you.

The General Assembly this morning paid tribute to Mr. Ismat Kittani who died recently.  On behalf of the General Assembly, the President conveyed his deepest condolences to Mr. Kittani's family and the Assembly observed a minute of silence.  There were also statements by the Deputy Secretary-General and the Chairs of the Regional Groups.

The President then drew the attention of members to two draft resolutions regarding dates for Dialogue among Civilizations and the special session on children.  According to draft resolution A/56/L.6, Dialogue among Civilizations will be scheduled from the 8 to 9 November, instead of 3 to 4 December as originally planned.  The item on Africa which was originally scheduled from 8 to 9 November will be re-scheduled to 3 to 4 December.  So the two items have simply changed places.

Draft resolution A/56/L.7 is recommending that the special session on children take place from 8 to 10 May 2002 and the NGO Forum on 6 to 7 May 2002, and action on those two “draft” resolutions will be taken in the afternoon.

The General Assembly then turned to the report of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Secretary-General's report on ICJ.  As of this morning there were 13 speakers including the President of the Court, Mr. Gilbert Guillaume.  He also met with the General Assembly President this morning. 

In the afternoon, the Assembly will take up the question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council.  In this respect I have a correction to something I said yesterday.  Although both the journal and the annotated agenda list the report of the open-ended working group on these issues as document A/56/47, it is actually A/55/47.  I am sorry if that has caused confusion.  So far there are 58 speakers listed for this afternoon. 

Yesterday, I was asked a question about an allocation of $325,000 for travel for the President of ECOSOC and his staff.  As far as I have been able to find out, ECOSOC is recommending to the General Assembly, that ECOSOC be provided with the means to carry out its important work.  You might recall that one of the points in the Millennium Declaration was the strengthening of the ECOSOC.  The amount suggested is $125,000 not $325,000 and it is for travel of the President or Vice-presidents, for hospitality and miscellaneous assistance.  I should point out that the ECOSOC President does not have United Nations staff

assigned to his office, but has to rely on assistance from the permanent mission.

That is what I have for you today.

Spokesman for the Secretary-General:  Any questions for Jan?  If not, I have an answer for you, the Secretary-General met yesterday with Sergio Vieira de Mello, and de Mello was accompanied by Mr. [Mari] Alkatiri.  And just to remind you that the two of them will meet you at the stakeout tomorrow.  They will talk on the second floor.

Thank you very much.

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