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.

Briefing by the Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General

Good afternoon.

**Olympics

In a message issued today, the Secretary-General urged the observance of the Olympic Truce, a time for warring parties to lay down their arms while athletes from the community of nations meet under the noble flame of the Olympic torch.

“The Olympic Movement and the United Nations share fundamental ideals,” the Secretary-General said in his message, “tolerance and understanding; equal opportunities and fair play; and, most of all, peace.”

While limited in duration and scope, the Olympic Truce can offer a neutral point of consensus, a window of time to open a dialogue, and a pause to provide relief to a suffering population, the Secretary-General said.

The full text is available upstairs and also on the Web.  And of course, as you know, the Olympic Truce is related to the Winter Olympics, starting next week in Salt Lake City. 

**Secretary-General’s Travels

The Secretary-General and his wife Nane arrived today in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, for a private visit.

On his arrival, the Secretary-General met with Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok. They discussed, among other topics, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Tomorrow, the Secretary-General will address the International Model UN at The Hague.  He will be back in New York on Monday, and he will be speaking late that afternoon at the World Economic Forum.  We will try to make the Secretary-General's statement for that event available tomorrow afternoon, under embargo until delivery time.

**Security Council

The Council is meeting in closed consultations this morning to discuss two draft resolutions, one on the UNObserver Mission inGeorgia which would extend its mandate until the end of June of this year, the other resolution would extend the UN mission in East Timor until 20 May –- the date of East Timor’s independence.

Council members will also be discussing a draft Presidential statement on the situation in Africa, which follows the open meeting held yesterday and Tuesday.

The two resolutions and the Presidential statement are expected to be adopted later today.  Following those votes, the Council will hold an open meeting as a wrap-up of its work for this month.

Late yesterday afternoon, after finishing its public meetings on the situation in Africa and on East Timor, the Council was briefed on the Middle East by Terje Roed Larsen, the UN Special Coordinator for the region.

Earlier this month, the Council had asked to receive monthly briefings by the Secretariat on the Middle East.  This was the first of these briefings.

After the Council briefing, Larsen said to reporters that he had told the Council that the situation on the ground was grim and deteriorating.

“If a ceasefire is to take hold in the Middle East,” Larsen said, “it has to be underpinned by economic progress and political progress.”

Today Larsen is in Washington, to attend a meeting of the so-called quartet of Middle East envoys, which includes US Envoy William Burns, Russian Envoy Andrei Vdovin and EU Envoy Miguel Moratinos.

Back to the Council:  at the end of consultations last night, the President, Ambassador Jagdish Koonjul of Mauritius, said members of the Council were increasingly concerned at the unprecedented levels of violence and the steady worsening situation in the Middle East.  They deplored the loss of life and suffering of the civilian populations on all sides.

**UNRWA

The deteriorating conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after 16 months of strife, closures and sanctions have compelled the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East –- known as UNRWA -- to appeal to the international community for $117 million in emergency funds for 2002.

The UNRWA will use the emergency funding to provide food aid, medical care and work programmes to alleviate the worst of the suffering among the 1.4 million refugees in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The agency plans to distribute $26 million of food aid to 217,000 of the very poorest families in the West Bank and Gaza.  An additional $55 million is earmarked to be spent on emergency work schemes to benefit thousands of unemployed.

Cash, clothing, and in-kind assistance will be given to 40,000 of the most desperate households –- often those with no breadwinner. 

For more information, you can pick the press release in my office, and the head of UNRWA’s New York office, Maher Nasser, is in the back of the room, you can see him over there, if you have more questions.

**Human Rights

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson is in Brasilia today, where she is on a three-day visit to Brazil, during which she will discuss with the Brazilian authorities the follow-up to the recommendations that were issued following her last visit to Brazil, in May 2000.  She is scheduled to meet with President Fernando Henrique Cardoso during her visit.

While she is there, the High Commissioner will take part in a number of events organized in conjunction with the World Social Forum, in Porto Alegre, which is being held at the same time as the World Economic Forum here.  The Secretary-General will be represented at the World Social Forum by Jose Antonio Ocampo, the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Mary Robinson will discuss her call to forge an ethical globalization, both in Porto Alegre and then, this weekend, in New York at the World Economic Forum.

**Afghanistan

The 23 members of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women –- the treaty body charged with the monitoring of the human rights of women and girls in the 168 States parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women -- have drafted a statement of solidarity with the women of Afghanistan. 

The statement has been transmitted to Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai, through the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi. 

The statement of solidarity will be contained in the final report of the meeting, which is expected to be adopted on the last day of the session tomorrow, Friday, 1 February.

We also have briefing notes from Islamabad, which contain an update on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan including on movements of displaced populations and aid efforts under way.

In addition, on the racks is the military technical agreement between the Afghan Interim Administration and the International Security Assistance Force led by the United Kingdom.  It was transmitted in a letter to the Security Council President from Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom.

**East Timor

We also have available in our office briefing notes from Dili, East Timor.  They give you details of the work of East Timor’s Constituent Assembly, which by an overwhelming vote decided to transform itself into the future legislature of East Timor.

**Health

This Saturday, at the World Economic Forum, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland will launch a joint report, issued by WHO, the UN Children’s Fund, UNAIDS, the World Bank, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the UN Population Fund, calling for a massive response against infectious diseases.

The report is called “Scaling Up the Response to Infectious Diseases,” and says that an expansion in the use of known and cost-effective interventions can reduce malaria and tuberculosis deaths by half and AIDS deaths by a quarter over the next decade.  What is required, the report is to suggest, is well-targeted spending amounting to $66 billion a year by the year 2015 -- an amount which the report suggests could save 8 million lives a year.

**WHO Launches Internet Initiative for Developing Nations

According to the World Health Organization, many thousands of doctors, researchers, health policy-makers and others in about 70 developing countries will from today gain free access through the Internet to one of the world's largest collections of biomedical literature.

They will benefit from an initiative launched by WHO and the six biggest medical journal publishers, which Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland calls perhaps the biggest step ever taken to reduce the health information gap between rich and poor countries. 

The initiative is a major aspect of the work of the Health InterNetwork project, which was introduced by the Secretary-General at the UN Millennium Summit in the year 2000.

**Budget

South Africa became the 40th nation to pay its regular budget dues to the UN for this year in full, with a payment of over $4.5 million.  Since today is the end of January, all regular budget assessments, which are sent to Member States for payment at the first of January, come due; and today, we are actually ahead of the pace of payments during 2001, when, by this date, 37 countries had paid their dues in full.

**Press Conferences

And to close my part of the briefing I will tell you about press conferences. 

Today at 2:30 p.m. here in this room, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs is sponsoring a press conference by NGOs participating in the Johannesburg Summit to call on governments to address globalization and trade issues. 

And tomorrow at 10:15 a.m. the World Bank is sponsoring a press conference by the Business Partners for Development, who will discuss the lessons of three years of Tri-Sector Partnerships working to maximize the benefits of communities from the private sector, civil society and governments working together. 

Any questions before we go to Jan?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Concerning the briefings on the Middle East, it has been said that they would be regular, will they be monthly?

Answer:  That is the idea.

Question:  But that is not written in the statement, it is written regular, not monthly.

Answer:  The understanding is that it will be that kind of frequency.

Thank you very much.  Jan?

Briefing by the Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly

Yes.  I have had a crazy morning so I have arrived here empty-handed but if you have question I will answer them.

**Questions and Answers

Question:  I am puzzled by the Olympic solemn appeal, is this a resolution or are they just “taking note”?

Answer:  There was a resolution passed on 11 December about the Olympics as such, and also a kind of appeal.  But traditionally the President of the General Assembly appeals to countries around the world to observe the Olympic Truce when we come closer to the actual date of the Olympic.  So you first have a resolution that was adopted in December and when the date gets closer, the President reads a solemn appeal for the Olympic Truce to take effect a week before the Games and extend to a week after the Games.

Question:  So is that what he did today?

Answer:  That is what he did today.

Question:  There is a resolution before the Assembly today with regard to the Economic and Social Council.  Has this thing been resolved, the discussion of the report itself as had been requested?

Answer:  That was resolved, the work of the Economic and Social Council and the entirety of the report were before the General Assembly.  Usually parts of the report go to various committees, but this time there was a request to discuss the entirety of the report in the General Assembly.  And that was done.

Thank you very much.

* *** *