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 Manoel De Almeida e Silva, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Briefing by the Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General

Good afternoon.  Sorry for the slight delay.  Jan Fischer, Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly, is not here today, he will not be briefing you as he is out sick.  On a briefing by security for the general debate, he asked me to tell you that it is being arranged and that the date and venue will be confirmed as soon as he has it. 

As you know, and I am sure that is why we have so many of you here, today, the guest of today's briefing is Giandomenico Picco, the Personal Representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilization.  He will be sitting up here as soon as I finish the briefing and answer your questions.  He will be briefing you on the session that will be taking place on 8 and 9 November on the Year of Dialogue among Civilizations. 

**Secretary-General meets with UN Staff

I will start the briefing with a note on the Secretary-General's activities in Geneva, which could almost be qualified as a United Nations family day.  He was seeing a number of UN people in Geneva.

He first started addressing the staff at the Palais des Nations, UN Headquarters in Geneva, and told them that in the wake of the 11 September attacks in the United States, their safety, staff safety, was his constant concern.

He also said the conferring of the Nobel Peace Prize was an honor for the whole United Nations.  As the de facto center of humanitarian affairs, Geneva has a particular claim to this award, especially staff who are on the front lines in the field, he added.

He then responded to questions from staff members; we have made available upstairs an excerpt of the exchange he had with our colleagues in Geneva, so I won't go into details about that except that the Secretary-General agreed heartily with the views of one staff member who said that the root causes of terrorism need to be confronted.  “We need to fight terrorism on many fronts,” he said, “not just sending in police or intelligence people or military, but we have to make conditions that dissuade people from getting engaged in these sorts of activities in the first place.”

Prior to the meeting with all the staff, the Secretary-General had a private meeting with the leaders of the staff association in Geneva.

The Secretary-General then went to the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO), where he was greeted at the lobby by Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland and about 1,000 WHO staff.  Remembering the start of his own

UN career as a junior professional at WHO almost 40 years ago, he said, “What my experience proves is that this place prepares you for everything and anything”.

After a short address, he met privately with Dr. Brundtland for a review of progress in setting up the Global AIDS and Health Fund [aimed at fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria].  They also discussed bio-terrorism and the situation in Afghanistan.

Over a working lunch, the Secretary-General and High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers talked of the problems of providing assistance to Afghan refugees, as both Pakistan and Iran continued to close their borders to those refugees.  Lubbers had just returned from visiting Pakistan and Iran to press for open borders.

The Secretary-General's afternoon appointments were all bilateral or internal meetings, starting with a farewell call by Danuta Hubner, who just stepped down as head of the UN’s Economic Commission for Europe to return to national service.  Ms. Hubner has been called back by her Government, the Government of Poland.  She will be State Secretary of Foreign Affairs and I believe she will be dealing mostly with European Union issues. 

His other appointments included Brazilian Ambassador Celso Amorim, International Court of Justice Judge Nabil El-Araby, the UN Special Representative for Information and Communication Technology José Maria Figueres Olsen and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler.

In the morning, New York time, he had a teleconference with his senior staff in New York on Afghanistan.

**Afghanistan

This leads me to notes on Afghanistan.  The Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi left Islamabad, Pakistan, this morning and is expected to reach Tehran, Iran, on Saturday morning after a stopover in Dubai.

On the humanitarian front, according to UNHCR, High Commissioner Lubbers emphasized, in his meetings in the region with officials in both Pakistan and Iran, that the first priority of the UN family must be the provision of urgently needed humanitarian assistance inside Afghanistan.

UNHCR also said that while the refugee agency and the neighbouring countries disagree on the fundamental question of open borders, UNHCR will also try to work together with Afghanistan’s neighbouring states to try to ensure that those most vulnerable can receive temporary protection and assistance.  This means, for example, that women, children, elderly, the sick and wounded would be cared for in Pakistan.

On the ground, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan reported that during the night of 28-29 October a group of armed men broke into an NGO office in Kabul, beating and tying up one guard.

In Herat, in western Afghanistan, three clinics run by a non-governmental organization have sustained minor damage due to the air strikes.

Reports from Kandahar suggest that most UN offices are now under the control of the Taliban or those aligned with the Taliban.  Most of the buildings continue to fly the UN flag.  Most UN vehicles also continue to be used by military elements.

Meanwhile, the Taliban authorities have allowed the UN Afghan staff in Kabul to establish radio contacts.  Communications will be open only from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. for six days a week and will be monitored by Taliban officials.

The World Food Programme (WFP) focused its briefing in Islamabad on the situation in the north eastern region of Afghanistan.

Saying that the major challenge was to get food in by the end of November and keeping roads open for as long as possible, WFP said it is gearing up its trucking operations.  Heavy duty trucks equipped with snow ploughs are on their way from Russia, according to WFP.

**Security Council

Moving to New York, the Security Council is meeting in closed consultations to discuss its programme of work for the month of November, under the Presidency of Ambassador Patricia Durant of Jamaica.

Council members will also be briefed by Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani of Singapore on the work of the Liberia sanctions committee which he chairs.

**Liberia Sanctions

And on the Liberia Sanctions, the latest six-month report by the Secretary-General on progress made by Liberia towards complying with Security Council Resolution 1343, which placed sanctions on that country, is out today.  It notes Liberia’s efforts to improve relations with its neighbours, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The report notes Liberia’s active participation in ministerial meetings of the Mano River Union, which brings together the three countries, whose efforts, the Secretary-General says, could go a long way towards restoring confidence and stability in the sub-region.

The Secretary-General also reiterates his call on the Security Council to remain engaged with Liberia and its people, saying, “The parlous economic and social conditions of the Liberian people, the tense security situation in the country and the peace requirements of Sierra Leone and the sub-region demand that sustained engagement”.

We understand that the Council is expected to discuss that report, that I just mentioned, on Wednesday. 

Still on the matter of Liberia, at 9:30 a.m. this coming Monday, Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani of Singapore who is the chairman, as I just mentioned of the sanctions committee on Liberia and Martin Ghungong Ayafor, Chairman of the Panel of Experts on Liberia will be here in room 226 to brief on the recent report of the Panel of Experts.  And that report will be discussed by the Council on Monday.  This will be discussed in an open debate, so I believe they will brief you before they go into the Council [Chamber].

**ICTY

Today in The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found five Bosnian Serbs guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes for the persecution, murder and torture of Bosnian Muslims and Croats at the Omarska detention camp in 1992.

The five men -– four of whom served at the Omarska camp, and the fifth of whom drove people to that camp as well as to others at Keraterm and Trnopolje –- were given sentences ranging from five to 25 years in prison.

In its judgment, the Tribunal said that mistreatment at the Omarska camp was constant and widespread, including beatings, rapes and malnourishment, which it summed up as “a hellish orgy of persecution”.

We have the Tribunal’s judgment summarized in a press release available in our office.

And I should also like to bring your attention that out on the racks today is the annual review of the Tribunal’s work, which notes its streamlined procedures and increased number of trials over the past year.  However, the report adds, many senior officials remain at large, especially in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, and more work needs to be done by domestic courts within the former Yugoslavia.

**Cyprus

Arriving in Cyprus earlier today, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, told journalists at Larnaca airport that the purpose of his tour is consultations in furtherance of the Secretary-General’s good offices mission.

In response to a number of questions, de Soto stressed the need to resume talks and to begin negotiations in earnest.  He said he would consider it progress “when negotiations are taking place between the leaders in order to put together a comprehensive settlement”.

Mr. de Soto also noted, “we continue our preparations in order to be useful to the two sides”, adding, “if I am here it is because we have reason to hope that it is possible to make progress”.

Later, the Special Advisor was meeting separately with His Excellency Glafcos Clerides, before proceeding to an early evening meeting with His Excellency Mr. Rauf Denktash.

**Lebanon Air Violations

This morning, the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for southern Lebanon, Staffan di Mistura, issued a statement following air violations of the Blue Line by Israeli military aircraft today and yesterday.

Di Mistura said these violations are unhelpful in avoiding the deterioration of an already tense situation.

The full text of the statement is available upstairs.

**Climate Change Conference

The first week of the international talks on climate change going on currently in Marrakech has made "good progress", according to the Executive Secretary of the UN framework Convention on Climate Change, Michael Zammit Cutajar.

Negotiating groups have been set up to address the technical and legal agreements reached in Bonn in July.  Work is expected to continue at that level until Tuesday night in order to finalize the technical agreements which will be forwarded as draft decisions to the High-level segment of the Conference.

The three-day high-level segment will begin on Wednesday, 7 November.

**Signings

This afternoon, Tunisia will become the 70^th signatory of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

**Press Releases

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced that this year’s A.H. Boerma Award, which recognizes journalistic excellence in raising awareness of global hunger, will go to Jim Clancy of CNN and Indian journalist Palagummi Sainath.  FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf praised the work of the two winners saying, "These journalists have helped to focus public attention at the international or regional level, on important aspects of the world's food problems".

The press release is available upstairs with details.

**International Run

For those of you who like to wake up early on Saturday mornings, tomorrow is the 23rd International Friendship Run and it will take place at 8 a.m. starting off from the North Lawn of the United Nations.  The run is organized by the United Nations Runners club in association with the New York Road Runners Club.

This annual run takes place on the day before the New York Marathon and usually attracts a number of runners participating in the marathon.  This year,

the Abebe Bakila Award for contributions to the sport will go to New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani for his support to the NY Marathon and his service to the City.

I will just mention but not go through it, we have available upstairs, as we do every Friday, the week ahead which tells you of events happening in the coming week.

Are there any questions before I invite our special guest to join us up here?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  With the development in Afghanistan, is Mr. Brahimi going to continue to maintain his headquarters here?

Deputy Spokesman:  He will have his headquarters here and as you know he has two deputies in the area, one for the political branch and one for the humanitarian branch.  And he will be commuting between New York, the region and other capitals of countries that can help influence, that are interested in solving this issue. 

Question:  Could we get some information, maybe after the briefing, on his schedule and how he might be contacted in Teheran and perhaps Dubai.

Deputy Spokesman:  We can try, I don't think we'll have any details for tomorrow, we may have details for Iran where he will stay a few days.  Dubai is just a transiting point.

Thank you.

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