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

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Manoel de Almeida e Silva, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

**New York Commissioner

Good afternoon.

I am going to start with a statement:

“The Secretary-General was very pleased to learn that Ms. Marjorie Tiven will be serving as New York City Commissioner for the United Nations and Consular Corps.  He looks forward to a close and constructive relationship with the Commissioner and her team in tackling many issues of mutual interest and concern.  And he welcomes the warm expression of support from Mayor Bloomberg as the United Nations and its host city open a new chapter in their long history together.” 

**Secretary-General at The Hague

Still on the Secretary-General, he is continuing his private visit to the Netherlands today, but this afternoon he went to the International Model United Nations at The Hague, to attend the 25th annual conference that brings together young people from all over the world to deal with the same issues the UN faces.

The Secretary-General told his young audience, “We probably have a future Secretary-General here today.  And when she assumes office, she will, I suspect, consider this General Assembly session an inspirational moment.”

The text of his remarks is available upstairs.  At the session today there were over 3,500 young people who interrupted the Secretary-General's speech several times with standing ovations.

The Secretary-General will be back here in New York on Monday, and he will be addressing the World Economic Forum later that day.

**Security Council

There are no Security Council meetings scheduled for today, as the President for the month of February, Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of Mexico, is holding bilateral consultations on the programme of work for the coming month.  Ambassador Aguilar Zinser, by the way, plans to brief you on the Council’s programme of work for February next Tuesday, at 1 p.m. in this room.

This afternoon the Council’s 661 Iraq Sanctions Committee will hold a closed meeting at 3 p.m.

As usual, the Committee’s chair, Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby of Norway, will brief journalists afterwards.

Yesterday afternoon, the Council held four formal meetings, including the adoption of two resolutions.

The Council unanimously approved a resolution extending the mandate of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia by six months, until the end of July.  The resolution welcomed and supported the finalization of the document on the distribution of competences between Tblisi and Sukhumi.  The Council also unanimously approved the extension of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor until 20 May, when East Timor is scheduled to become independent.

The Council also adopted a Presidential statement on Africa, and then held a public meeting to wrap up the Presidency of Mauritius for the month of January.

**Ethiopia–Eritrea Mission

The President of the Security Council has informed the Secretary-General in a letter that all 15 members of the Council will take part in the mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea later this month.

Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby of Norway will lead the mission, which will depart from New York on 20 February.

The mission will last five days, with visits in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Asmara, Eritrea, and the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ).

We have a list of participants available in the Spokesman’s Office and we are expecting to issue a press release later in the day.

**Georgia

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are working closely with the authorities in Georgia to recover safely and secure two powerful radioactive sources that were found in that country’s northwestern forests late last year.

The sources are cylinders, about the size of a person’s hand, that contain the radioactive element strontium-90.  Last December, three men who were exposed to the cylinders were hospitalized in Georgia.  The Georgian authorities subsequently located the radioactive sources and asked for the IAEA’s assistance in the recovery effort, and the Agency sent expert teams in January, but their work was hampered by severe winter weather.

Starting on 6 February, IAEA experts will meet with others from France, Germany, Russia and the United States, as well as with the Georgian authorities, to review the recovery operation and deal with measures to improve the security of radioactive sources in the country.

We have a press release from the Agency with more information.

**Iraq

Also on the IAEA, a seven-expert team from the Agency has completed its inspections of safeguarded nuclear materials at the Tuwaitha facility in Iraq, carrying out inspections from January 26 though 30.

The team’s activities, which were limited to verifying stocks of nuclear material sealed under IAEA safeguards, are not related to the weapons inspections mandated by the UN Security Council.  Iraq provided the necessary cooperation for the team to perform its activities satisfactorily.

As before, there is also a press release from the IAEA on this.

**Asylum

More than 510,000 people applied for asylum in 27 industrialized countries in 2001, according to a preliminary statistical report issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  The report analyzes asylum data for the year 2001 in 25 European countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. 

In 2001, for the first time, Afghans made up the largest group of people seeking asylum in industrialized countries.  Asylum applications from Afghans increased by 60 per cent in 2001 over 2000, placing Afghanistan at the top of the list of countries of origin for the whole year, up from third place in recent years.  However, the number of Afghans applying for asylum each month dropped off sharply towards the end of the year.

The second largest number of applicants in 2001 came from Iraq, followed by Turkey. 

The largest relative increase from 1999 to 2001 among the top 40 countries of origin is in applications from Colombians, with five times as many applications in 2001 as in 1999. 

**International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

We have just heard from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that the appeal for joinder in the Milosevic case has been granted.

This means that there will be one trial for all of Milosevic's alleged crimes in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

We are receiving a press release with more details, which will be available by the time the briefing is over. 

Still on the international Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia:  Yesterday after the briefing, we got word from the Tribunal that Dusan Fustar, a Bosnian Serb who voluntarily surrendered, had arrived at the court’s detention centre in The Hague.

The suspect is charged with crimes against humanity committed in 1992 when he was a commander at the Keraterm camp, where hundreds of detainees were beaten, tortured and killed.

A press release is available upstairs with more details.

**Australia Detention

Going back to UNHCR news.  While welcoming the end of protests in Australia's Woomera detention centre, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees today urged Canberra to review its policy of detaining asylum seekers.

The UNHCR said it was concerned about calls in Australia for a speedy return of asylum seekers to Afghanistan, where some of the Woomera detainees come from.  It cited a precarious security situation in many parts of the country, as well as continued problems faced by some of Afghanistan's ethnic groups.

**Libya

The Secretary-General, in a letter to the President of the Security Council, has named two additional international observers to attend the appeals phase of the Lockerbie trial that is being conducted by a Scottish court in Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands.

The observers are Justice Ben Hlatshwayo, representing the Organization of African Unity, and Dr. Awad El Hassan El Noor, representing the League of Arab States.  Both of these entities have demonstrated a long-standing interest in the case of the bombing of Pan American flight 103 over Scotland.

You’ll recall that the Secretary-General nominated five observers to witness the first phase of the case, in which one Libyan national was found guilty of involvement in the bombing and another was acquitted.  The observers are not required to report to the UN on the trial.

**East Timor

In Dili today, the Chief Electoral Officer of the Independent Electoral Commission, Carlos Valenzuela, outlined plans for East Timor’s presidential election, which is scheduled for 14 April.

According to Mr. Valenzuela, starting on Monday the Commission will begin receiving registration applications for new political parties and the nomination of candidates for this presidential election.

There are more details in the briefing notes from Dili. 

**ICT Task Force

The UN Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Task Force, launched last November by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, will hold its second meeting at United Nations Headquarters, in the Economic and Social Council Chamber, this Sunday and Monday.  The Task Force was established to harness the power of information and communication technologies for advancing development and poverty eradication.

The meetings of the Task Force, which is chaired by former Costa Rican President José María Figueres Olsen, will be closed, but individual interviews with Task Force members will be arranged on request.  Also, members of the Task Force will brief the press on their meeting in this room next Monday, at 2:45.

**United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa has been working with Cisco Systems to bridge the digital divide by training African women to use information technology.  Today, the first 26 women -– from 16 different African countries –- graduated from the ECA's "Cisco Internet Networking Academy". 

There is a press release with more details on that. 

**Africa

Still on Africa, the situation in Liberia is reported to have calmed down following last weekend's fighting near Sawmill, Bomi County, some 100 kilometres north of the capital Monrovia, according to UNHCR.

Regarding the explosions in Lagos, Nigeria, UNICEF said it was helping with the two camps established to accommodate nearly 4,600 persons internally displaced following the explosions last week.  A UNICEF team had also been set up to coordinate family tracing and reunion activities in the camps.  Many families had already been reunited. 

The World Food Programme reported that in Goma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 1,500 tonnes of food had been distributed to

412,000 victims of the volcanic eruption inside the town.

**WHO

Leading health experts will join together with the ambassadors of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in a round-table discussion on health, to be held next Tuesday in the ECOSOC Chamber from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.  The round table, sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) under the auspices of the President of ECOSOC, will focus on the contribution of human resources development to sustainable development, especially concerning health and education.

The WHO Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland will lead the discussions.

**Signings

I am approaching the end of the briefing.  Just a short while ago, Latvia signed both Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict now has 94 signatories, and the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography now has 90 signatories.

**Budget

Two more countries paid their regular budget dues in full for this year: Botswana, which paid more than $111,000, and France, which paid more than     $72 million.  So far, 42 Member States have paid their regular-budget dues in full for 2002.

**World Chronicle Programme

The Department of Public Information asked us to tell you that the World Chronicle TV programme with Wolfgang Hoffman, Executive Secretary for the Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, will be shown today at 3:30 p.m. on in-house television channel 3 or 31. 

**Press Conferences

None are scheduled for this afternoon, but on Monday at 11 o'clock

Mr. Valli Moosa, Minister for Environmental Affairs and Tourism (South Africa) and Dr. Crispian Oliver, Director-General, Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (South Africa) will discuss South Africa's preparations for the Johannesburg Summit.

And at 2:45 p.m., as I already mentioned to you, the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force will discuss the outcome of the second meeting of the Task Force. 

I have also been asked by Jan Fischer, Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly, to tell you that he will be away from today until 11 February. 

Finally I will not go through it, but you have available upstairs and on our Web site the Week Ahead.

Sorry for the long briefing, are there any questions?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Could you elaborate on the Lockerbie situation, because I thought it might not be closed when they announced who would be indicted?

Answer:  It went beyond the indictment phase.  There has been a trial and now they are in an appeal phase.  It is a Scottish court in The Hague, not a United Nations court, so if you want more technical details you will have to discuss it with them.  Out of the two individuals, one was found guilty and the other one acquitted.  The two observers that I mentioned are observers for the appeals phase, there had been five of them for the trial period.

I thank you very much and wish you all a very pleasant weekend.

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