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 Manoel de Almeida e Silva, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General, and Jan Fischer, Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly.

Deputy Spokesman’s Briefing

Sorry for the delay.  Let me first start by telling you that our guest today is Noel Sinclair, Head of the United Nations Political Office in Bougainville (UNPOB).  He’ll be telling us about the peace process and developments there.

**Afghanistan Political

Lakhdar Brahimi, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Afghanistan, is back at United Nations Headquarters today.  He is having a series of internal meetings, including one with the Secretary-General, who will be arriving in New York from Stockholm later this afternoon.  After that meeting with the Secretary-General, they will both go to the Security Council for consultations at 4:00 p.m..  And Mr. Brahimi will be briefing the Council on his recent negotiations and talks, in Kabul and Islamabad.  Mr. Brahimi is expected to stay in New York for consultations until the middle of next week and then return to Kabul in time for the transfer of power to the Interim Administration on 22 December.

**Afghanistan Administration Fund

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today established the United Nations Afghan Interim Authority Fund as a special “window” for donors to provide financial support to help the Interim Authority implement its responsibilities during the next six months.  Effective immediately, donors can contribute to the Fund, which covers the following:  administrative costs, essential rehabilitation of administrative facilities, support for the implementation of special responsibilities as outlined in the Bonn Agreement, as well as teachers’ salaries to ensure schools can re-open in March 2002.  A press release will be issued later this afternoon by UNDP on that Fund.

**Afghanistan in the Field

Still on Afghanistan, today the government of Uzbekistan and the United Nations signed an agreement aimed at facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance to northern Afghanistan by United Nations agencies and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  The agreement signed in Tashkent is expected to accelerate administrative procedures to ensure that aid gets to the under-supplied provinces of Afghanistan, including delivery across the recently opened Friendship Bridge.  A press release on this agreement is also expected later this afternoon.

From the field today, the reports say that there are some signs of stability and normalcy returning to parts of Afghanistan, including the return

of more than 14,000 people to various parts of the country over the past week.  The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), however, is cautioning Afghans not to rush back.  UNHCR also says that countries in the region should not rush home any of the more than 3.5 million refugees.  The security situation in many parts of Afghanistan remains tense.  Refugees from the Kandahar area mainly from the Pashtun ethnic group, meanwhile, continue to arrive in Pakistan.  The World Food Programme (WFP) reports that a private truck carrying WFP wheat slipped off an icy bridge in northeastern Afghanistan, killing the driver instantly.

Also available today is the summary of a press briefing in Islamabad by the Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, Mike Sackett.  He outlines the humanitarian operations under way and says that 72 international staff now work inside Afghanistan, almost the same number as before 11 September.  Today, 35 international aid workers are in Kabul, 20 in Herat, nine in Mazar-i-Sharif and eight in Faizabad.

**Middle East

Concerning the situation the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), reports that following the destruction of 35 refugee shelters in Khan Younis camp last night during an Israeli military operation, UNRWA staff distributed tents, food parcels, mattresses, mats, kitchen kits and cash to the 57 families affected, comprising a total of 345 people.  During the incursion into the Khan Younis Camp, six families, comprising 40 persons with most of them women and children, stayed at the UNRWA Khan Younis Health Centre for protection and left the premises this morning.

**Security Council

Here in New York this morning, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1384 (2001), extending the mandate of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) for a further six months, until 15 June 2002.  Council members are currently in an open meeting on the recent report of the Expert Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  At the start of the meeting, the Chairman of the Panel, Ambassador Mahmoud Kassem, briefed the Council on the report.  In addition to Council members, fourteen others are inscribed on the speakers’ list.

This afternoon at 3:00 p.m., Council members will meet in closed consultations to discuss a draft resolution on the situation in the Middle East.  The resolution was introduced yesterday afternoon in closed consultations that took place then.  Following the Middle East discussion, the Council will take up Afghanistan and receive a briefing, again in closed consultations, by the Secretary-General’s  Special Representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, as I just told you.  The Secretary-General, as I believe I mentioned, will also be present for that Council consultation.

**Democratic Republic of the Congo

This morning in Kinshasa, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Amos Ngongi, briefed journalists on his recent trip to Goma, Kindu and Kisangani.  He had been in the company of the ambassador of Belgium to Kinshasa, as well as the ambassadors of the five Permanent Members of the Security Council.  He said the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) had informed the ambassadors that its “commitment to the demilitarization of Kisangani was firm and irreversible”.  But the RCD also had two conditions, in response to which, Mr. Ngongi told the press, the ambassadors reminded the RCD that, “the Security Council resolution demanded a demilitarization without conditions”.

Mr. Ngongi termed the outcome of this visit as very positive for the future of the peace process in the Democratic Republic.  “This visit,” he concluded, “gave also a chance to the ambassadors to take the measure of what will be needed to successfully carry out this phase III in terms of labor, equipment and money”.

**Kosovo Landmines

Some good news from Pristina.  Tomorrow in Pristina, the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre in Kosovo will transfer the long-term responsibility for mine action to local authorities, following its evaluation that all known minefields and cluster bomb strike sites have been cleared to internationally acceptable standards.  The Centre coordinated the work of 16 mine clearance organizations, using personnel from a dozen countries working alongside 900 trained Kosovars, to destroy nearly 25,000 landmines and more than 8,300 cluster bombs, in just two and a half years.  Total clearance, however, can never be guaranteed, and Kosovo’s Department of Civil Security and Emergency Preparedness will now take on the responsibility for managing any residual threat.

**Hague Tribunal

Today in The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) unsealed the indictment against a former Bosnian Serb commander, Vinko Pandurevic.  He is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes linked to the killings of thousands of Bosnian Muslims captured from the “safe area” of Srebrenica.  Yesterday, the Tribunal granted the provisional release of four Bosnian Muslims who had surrendered voluntarily to the Tribunal and who are to return in order to stand trial.  There’s a press release upstairs on both topics.

**Drug Control Programme

In Vienna, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs concluded a two-day meeting yesterday by approving the budget of the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) for the next two years and expressing support for the management reforms taking place within that agency.  Pino Arlacchi, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNDCCP), took the occasion of the meeting to inform the Commission that, in agreement with the Secretary-General, he is relinquishing his duties with effect from 1 January 2002.  His four-year tenure included two major events that strengthened the Office’s role:  the 1998 General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem and last year’s United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in Italy.  This information is all in a press release issued by his Office, which we have upstairs. (See Press Release SOC/NAR/835)

      **Humanitarian Partnership

This morning, Kenzo Oshima, Under-Secretary-General for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, jointly signed an agreement with Ulf Persson, President of Public Affairs of the telecommunications company Ericsson.  Ericsson will donate a telecommunications “Switch”, which will enhance the mobile communications systems used by the Organization in humanitarian relief.  The system will be based at the logistics base of the United Nations in Brindisi, Italy.  The agreement is part of an ongoing partnership between the Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Ericsson, known as “First on the Ground”.  And that’s one of the Secretary-General’s Millennium initiatives.  The “Switch” will be operational by June 2002.

**Budget

Sierra Leone today became the one hundred and thirty-third Member State to pay its 2001 regular budget contribution in full, with a payment of more than $10,000.  The United States also made a payment of over $99 million towards its regular budget arrears.

**Press Releases

Among the press releases today, we have two revised fact sheets from the World Health Organization (WHO).  The first is on yellow fever, which affects 200,000 people a year, causing 30,000 deaths in mostly tropical countries.  The second is on climate and health, and looks at how both climate and weather impact on health.  And from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), we have a press release, embargoed until tomorrow, on a new marine nature reserve in the Indian Ocean off Mozambique.

**Press Conferences

On press conferences, this is for Tuesday.  At 3:30 in the afternoon, the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations is sponsoring a press conference on the final report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty.  The speakers will be Paul Heinbecker, the Ambassador of Canada, and co-Chairman of the Commission; Gareth Evans of Australia, and Mohammed Sahnoun of Algeria.

**The Week Ahead

As every Friday, we have our Week Ahead, which I won’t read to you now but it is available upstairs, letting you know about activities next week which, as you all know, for the United Nations will be a shorter week since Monday is a holiday here.

Any questions before we move to Jan?  There are no questions so we’ll have Jan’s briefing and then our guest joining us. 

Briefing by the Spokesman for the General Assembly President

Thank you, Manoel.  General Assembly President Han Seung-soo presided over the plenary this morning, and he started out by sharing his experience in Oslo with the representatives.  He said, among other things, that he wished that they could have been there with him, and continued.

“Since 1945, the international community and the peoples of the world have exerted their best efforts, often with high hopes, for the realization of global peace and well-being through the United Nations.  Our efforts have not always been successful, nor our successes always permanent.  But we should not be discouraged.  I have no doubt that, were it not for the United Nations, humankind could hardly have advanced so far as it has in realizing the vision of the founding fathers of the United Nations in 1945.”  He also confirmed that he would consult closely with regard to how the prize money should be spent.

The President then announced that, after consultations with Member States, he had reappointed Tuiloma Slade and Alan Simcock as co-chairs of the consultative process on Ocean Affairs.  The Assembly then took up the draft resolution on the report of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  That resolution was introduced by Australia and  Iraq introduced an amendment to this resolution but a no-action motion was carried by 97 in favor to seven against (Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Syria, Jamaica, Cuba and Algeria) with twenty abstaining.  So the amendment was dropped.

Several Member States then stated their reservations with regard to a number of the preambular and operative paragraphs and called for separate votes on them.  The paragraphs were all adopted with significant majorities, however, and the Assembly was able to adopt the draft resolution as a whole with 150 in favor to one against (Democratic Republic of Korea) with two abstentions (Côte d’Ivoire and Lao People’s Democratic Republic).

The Assembly then turned to the outcome of the Millennium Summit and adopted draft resolution A/56/L.48, on follow-up to the Summit, without a vote.  The same action was taken with regard to the resolutions on new or restored democracies, on the return of cultural property and on cooperation with the Latin American Economic System.

It was then time for the Report of the Economic and Social Council, and either around now or perhaps in the afternoon, the Assembly will deal with a number of draft resolutions regarding humanitarian and disaster relief assistance -- including to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, East Timor, Central America, Somalia, Djibouti, Eastern European States affected by developments in the Balkans, the Palestinian people, the Sudan and also one regarding the Chernobyl disaster.  There are about a dozen speakers on this item.  That’s what I have.