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 Marie Okabe, Associate Spokeswoman for the Secretary-General.

**Secretary-General’s Visit to Washington

Good afternoon.

The Secretary-General is in the air en route to Washington D.C. where, after a private lunch, he will meet with United States President George W. Bush.

After that, the Secretary-General and his wife Nane will go to Capitol Hill, where they will have an informal discussion on the fight against AIDS with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  They were invited by Committee Chairman Senator Joseph Biden and ranking member Senator Jesse Helms.

In opening comments, the text of which was made available to you on an embargoed basis, the Secretary-General will appeal for increased funding to combat HIV/AIDS, including for Congressional support for the United States Administration’s request for an additional $200 million for the Global AIDS Fund for the year 2003.  He is expected to express confidence that Congress will approve those funds, and maybe even improve on them, adding to the Administration’s request, as they had done for 2002.

After that session, a press encounter with Senators Biden and Helms is scheduled.

In the evening the Secretary-General will attend a private dinner hosted by James Wolfensohn, the head of the World Bank.  He will return to New York first thing tomorrow morning.

**Security Council

This morning, Security Council members met in closed consultations to discuss the format of their annual report to the General Assembly.

A draft presidential statement on Kosovo was introduced which is set to be adopted tomorrow, the day on which the Secretary-General’s new Special Representative, Michael Steiner, is arriving in Pristina.  [The Spokesman's Office later announced that the statement was adopted in the early afternoon.]

Kenzo Oshima, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, then briefed the Security Council on the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Angola.  The Humanitarian Coordinator for Angola, Eric de Mul, is also present in the open meeting to take questions.

If the session is finished before the end of the briefing, we have asked

Mr. de Mul to join us.  Otherwise, catch him at the stakeout or here at the noon briefing tomorrow, during which he will be a guest.

Mr. Oshima cited what he described as shocking statistics:  63 per cent of all households live below the poverty line; 30 per cent of all children die before reaching the age of five; almost one third of the country’s entire population of 12 million is internally displaced.

Despite the tragic humanitarian situation, only 47 per cent of the

$233 million requested in the 2001 Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal was received. Mr. Oshima urged Member States to remember Angola, and encouraged them to give generously and immediately to the 2002 Appeal.

One positive development that Mr. Oshima noted was the increasing cooperation between the Government of Angola and the humanitarian community. Nevertheless, there are some concrete steps the Government needs to take, he said, such as securing roads, which would lower the cost of delivering food, which is now flown around the country, and establishing “days of tranquillity” to allow access for polio and other immunizations.

In concluding his remarks to the Council, Mr. Oshima said:  “Ultimately, the solution to the humanitarian crisis in Angola is the end of the war and a concerted effort needs to be made in this direction.”

Later this afternoon, Council members will again meet in consultations to be briefed on the situation in Liberia by Youssef Mahmoud of the Department of Political Affairs.  He is the Director of the Africa II Division of that Department.

**Slobodan Milosevic Trial

This morning in The Hague, the prosecution in the case against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic finished their opening statement, showing video clips and laying out the framework of the case against Milosevic over crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo in 1999.  Dirk Ryneveld finished the prosecution’s case this morning.

Following that, Milosevic made his own opening statement, and we expect him to continue with that statement tomorrow.

**Togo

Late yesterday, we released a statement attributable to the Spokesman relating to the meeting on Monday between the Secretary-General and the Foreign Minister of Togo, Koffi Panou.

During the meeting the Secretary-General expressed his concern to Minister Panou regarding the stalemate of the electoral process and the breakdown of the political consensus in Togo.

It is the Secretary-General’s view that the unilateral amendment by the Government of the Electoral Code is not conducive to the creation of favourable conditions for the holding of elections.

The Secretary-General remains ready, in cooperation with all parties working to resolve the Togolese crisis, to seek ways and means conducive to the return of the political consensus and to the holding of the legislative elections in a climate of peace and security.

The full text is available upstairs.

**Democratic Republic of Congo

A few items on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) -- Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno will travel to the Great Lakes region of Africa next week in support of the peace process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

He’s scheduled to start his visit in the DRC, where he will meet in Kinshasa with the country’s leadership.  He will also visit Kindu, Goma, Mbandaka and Kisangani.

Mr. Guéhenno will also go to Sun City in South Africa to meet with the key actors of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, which is set to open 25 February.  Other stops on this tour will include Uganda, Rwanda and Angola. 

**Democratic Republic of the Congo -- Volcano

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has issued a donor update outlining the need for an additional $21 million to fund ongoing efforts to provide relief to victims of the 17 January eruption of the volcano.

The update lays out United Nations humanitarian agencies’ plans for the next three months, which emphasize education, the monitoring of seismic activities and the provision of food and temporary shelter.

There are currently 120,000 people who were made homeless by the eruption living in the Goma area, with another 30,000 homeless scattered in locations in both the DRC and Rwanda.

**Democratic Republic of the Congo -- Human Rights

Iulia Motoc, the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, will be in that country from tomorrow through 19 February.

This is her first visit to the country since she was named to this post on 28 November of last year, following the resignation of the previous Rapporteur, Roberto Garreton.

During her stay, she is scheduled to meet with President Joseph Kabila, senior Government officials and the chief prosecutor of the special military court.

While in Kinshasa, she will also meet officials of the United Nations  mission in the DRC, as well as representatives of human rights organizations present in the country.

She will report back orally to the United Nations Human Rights Commission during its fifty-eighth session, which opens on 18 March and runs through 26 April in Geneva.

For more information, we have a press release that you can pick up upstairs.

**Afghanistan

On Afghanistan, just briefly, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, who as you know is in New York for consultations, is expected to brief a meeting of the Group of 21 on Afghanistan at 4:30 this afternoon.

**Human Rights

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Right, Mary Robinson, today issued a statement expressing her deepening concern at the deteriorating human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the worsening human insecurity in Israel.

She joined the Secretary-General in appealing to Israel to lift the “virtual house arrest” of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, and said that the current cycle of violence from both sides makes human rights work both more urgent and more difficult to pursue.

We have her statement upstairs.

**Sudan

Now, turning to the Sudan, the World Food Programme (WFP) today strongly condemned the bombing last Sunday of civilians living in Akuem, in southern Sudan in which three bombs landed directly on the zone for WFP food drops and three others fell nearby.  Two children were killed in the attack, and another 10 to

12 people were injured.

The WFP operations manager for southern Sudan, said, “The loss of innocent lives, particularly children, is totally unacceptable.”  The attack occurred just hours after the agency had finished distributing food to 18,000 people suffering from drought and insecurity in the area.

You can see their press release for more details.

**Treaties

A day after the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict entered into force, two more countries are to sign it, bringing the number of signatories up to 99. Lithuania signed in the morning, and Poland will sign the Protocol this afternoon.

Poland will also sign the Optional Protocol dealing with the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, becoming the ninety-second signatory to that protocol.

**Budget

Two more countries have paid their regular budget dues in full for this year -- the Czech Republic, with a payment of more than $1.9 million, and India, with a payment of more than $3.8 million.  So far this year, 46 Member States have paid their dues in full.

**Press Releases

Finally, there are no press conferences scheduled for today.

At 11 a.m. tomorrow, the Permanent Mission of Spain to the United Nations is sponsoring a press conference by Airline Ambassadors International, who will launch the International Youth Art Competition.

And as I mentioned, if Mr. de Mul cannot make it today -- he's the Humanitarian Coordinator for Angola -- he will brief on the situation there as our guest at the noon briefing tomorrow.

That's what I have for you.  Any questions?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Does Kofi Annan or the United Nations have any reaction to Jack Straw’s green paper regarding mercenaries and the use of mercenaries in United Nations peacekeeping missions?

Spokeswoman:  Our understanding at the moment is that the paper which was referred to in media reports, which is what we saw, is a British green paper.  It is a think-piece paper called Private Military Companies - Options for Regulations, in the United Kingdom, and it is circulated in the House of Commons.

The United Nations has not received this paper officially.  So I don’t really have any comment on it as of now.  The paper appears to raise the issues that you talked about -- about mercenaries in peacekeeping operations -- but it was primarily a discussion about the use of mercenaries in British companies. 

Question:  A follow-up on that.  Did Jack Straw or anybody who is involved in this green paper kind of sound out Kofi, Guéhenno or anybody here at the United Nations about this?

Spokeswoman:  I just spoke to Jean-Marie Guéhenno on it and, no, he had not been approached about this. 

Question:  Do you know if the statistics on Angola reflect the activities in rebel-controlled territories also, or only Government-controlled ones?

Spokeswoman:  Well, I suggest you go upstairs and pick up the information that was distributed today because they will show these IDPs, that is, internally displaced persons, by province, and if you look there are displaced people virtually in every province.  So I think we’re talking about a nationwide situation and one that is deteriorating in a rather disturbing way.

Any other questions?  Have a good afternoon.

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