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 Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

**Secretary-General Meeting with “Quartet” on Mideast

This morning in Madrid, the Secretary-General met privately with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, European Union (EU) security chief Javier Solana, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqué (representing the EU rotating Presidency), and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, to finalize the text of a joint statement on the Middle East.  Afterwards, at a press conference by the five, the Secretary-General made remarks of his own before reading out the joint statement by the Quartet.  The Quartet, of course, is the US, the UN, the EU and Russia.

In his remarks, the Secretary-General described a threefold crisis in the Middle East:  intensified fighting between Palestinians and Israelis, a mounting humanitarian and human rights crisis in the West Bank and Gaza, and rising regional tensions, particularly along Israel's northern border with Lebanon.  In their statement, the members of the Quartet affirmed that there must be "immediate, parallel and accelerated movement toward near term and tangible political progress."  They also called for a defined series of steps leading to peace, "involving recognition, normalization and security between the sides, an end to Israeli occupation and an end to the conflict."  The statement went on: "This will allow Israel to enjoy enduring peace and security and the Palestinian people to realize their hopes and aspirations in security and dignity."

Asked by a journalist about the bus attack today in Haifa, the Secretary-General said that such attacks are morally repugnant, adding "attacks against innocent and unarmed civilians are terrorism that we cannot tolerate."  He commented that the members of the Quartet hoped to meet again shortly.  Depending on the outcome of General Powell's mission, he said, they could meet "sooner rather than later."  From Madrid, the Secretary-General traveled to Rome to chair the twice-annual meeting of the heads of UN agencies, funds and programmes, now known as the Chief Executives Board.  This evening he is scheduled to meet with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who will also host a dinner in his honour.

**UNWRA

The humanitarian situation in the Jenin refugee camp is fast turning into a catastrophe, according to Peter Hansen, Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).  According to an UNRWA press release, Israeli tanks and bulldozers are intensifying their demolition of shelters in the Jenin camp, with field reports indicating that the bulldozers are “shaving off” shelters.  Despite continuing requests to the Israel Defence Force, UNRWA’s emergency teams, medical staff, ambulance crews, and trucks carrying medicine and food continue to be blocked a few hundred metres from the Camp.

Yesterday we told you that Israeli troops had entered an UNRWA school in Ramallah.  This morning, the agency says the army arrested 104 students, the totality of students in the school at the time, along with the Dean of the Centre, Dr. Mohammad Omran.  This is the largest Israeli military operation into an institute of higher learning run by UNRWA.  A protest has been lodged with the Israeli authorities, calling for the immediate release of the trainees and the Dean, and also access for UNRWA's legal team to the detainees.  The UNRWA has reminded the Israeli authorities of their responsibility for the security and sanctity of UNRWA staff and facilities, and added that military incursions into its facilities are unacceptable.

The UNRWA Commissioner-General Hansen has condemned the detention of trainees and Dr. Omran and added “incursions into UNRWA installations by Israeli forces and detention of UNRWA trainees and staff are completely unacceptable and contrary to Israel's obligations to guarantee the security of UN staff and installations.”  We have the full text of the release upstairs.

**Middle East Humanitarian Statement

Meeting in Rome, the heads of the major international humanitarian agencies, both UN and others, took the unprecedented step of issuing a joint statement “expressing their deep dismay and outrage over the military actions in the occupied Palestinian territory and the consequences of such actions in exacerbating the crisis.”  The statement notes the “increasing and worrying incidences of the flagrant disrespect of international law and the security of humanitarian personnel.”  They say, “this is a humanitarian crisis without precedent in its destructive impact on the Palestinian people and their institutions.  The likely long-term consequences of this crisis for stability and durable peace are a cause for major concern.”  They go on to condemn suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians, calling them “morally repugnant.” 

**Security Council

The Security Council began its work this morning by meeting in closed consultations.  They discussed their upcoming mission to the Great Lakes, which is scheduled to be in the region from 27 April to 7 May.  A draft of the mission’s terms of reference was distributed.  An official from the UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), Peter Swarbrick, introduced the mission’s assessment of armed groups operating in the country.  Last February, the Council had asked the mission to conduct such an assessment as part of its preparations for disarmament, demobilization, repatriation, resettlement and reintegration in society of former combatants.  The report is a fact sheet which examines the number and organizations of several armed groups operating in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, including Burundian rebels, former members of the Rwandan Armed Forces and Mayi-Mayi combatants, among others.  This report is on the racks.

Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahima Fall then presented the Secretary-General’s latest report on Guinea-Bissau.  And as we speak, Kieran Prendergast, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, is briefing the Council on the Middle East, including the Secretary-General’s meeting in Madrid.  Consultations on the Middle East amongst the members is expected to continue after Mr. Prendergast’s briefing.

**Afghanistan

Today in Kabul, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, expressed his confidence that the international community would remain constructively engaged in Afghanistan and would, he said,  “stay the course and resist the temptation to pull out before the job is done.”

In his speech at the Implementation Group Meeting, which was convened by the Afghan Interim Administration, with participants from donor countries as well as representatives of non-governmental organizations and the United Nations system, Mr. Brahimi paid tribute to the Afghan Interim Administration.  He said that in a matter of months, it had made significant achievements in finance, education, and measures to eradicate illegal drug cultivation and trafficking, as well as in many other areas.

However, he said, despite these significant achievements, “most Afghans have not yet seen the dividends of peace.”  He appealed to the international community to fulfil the pledges made in Tokyo and write out cheques.  “This is the only way to ensure that the people of Afghanistan feel the concrete improvements in their lives that are needed to nurture their faith in peace,” he said.

      **Afghan Refugees

Refugee returns from Pakistan surged well beyond 203,000 on Tuesday in the five weeks since the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began moving refugees back.  Afghans returned home aboard hundreds of trucks despite security problems in eastern Afghanistan, after local authorities convinced protesting poppy farmers to let the returnees’ vehicles pass through from the Khyber Pass. 

In Pakistan, the large number of Afghans opting to return has forced UNHCR to augment the number of registration centres and mobile registration teams.  The UN refugee agency has now opened three registration centres in the Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan provinces.  We have more details available upstairs.

**Republic of Congo

Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima has voiced his alarm at reports of the worsening humanitarian situation in the Republic of the Congo.  Fighting between members of the Ninja militia and Government forces, which began on

27 March in the Pool region, has now spread into sections of the capital city, Brazzaville.  United Nations humanitarian agencies confirm that 15,000 people have been internally displaced and that tens of thousands more are on the move.  Assessment teams are being dispatched to those areas where access is possible, to ascertain the numbers and condition of the internally displaced persons. 

Mr. Oshima stressed to all parties the need to respect humanitarian principles, in particular those that provide for the protection of civilians in armed conflict, and to allow humanitarian workers access to those in need.

**East Timor

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, today traveled to the town of Batugade, on the border between East and West Timor, to hold a ceremony that symbolically welcomed home the 200,000th refugee to return from West Timor, Indonesia.  Close to 500 refugees crossed the border from West Timor today, and nearly 3,500 have returned to East Timor since the beginning of April.  Last month, some 4,000 refugees returned to East Timor, which had been the highest monthly total recorded in two years.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) attributes the upsurge in returns to the upcoming presidential elections and next month’s Independence ceremony.  The UNHCR, you’ll be pleased to know, also provided 150 teddy bears for today’s returning children, which Mr. Vieira de Mello handed out at Batugade.

**WFP and Korea

The World Food Programme (WFP) warned today of a severe food crisis in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea unless new pledges are made for its emergency operations.  The WFP said that a break in the food aid pipeline would seriously disrupt efforts to alleviate hunger and reduce malnutrition.  The WFP operations in the Democratic People’s Republic feed 6.4 million people, primarily children, pregnant and nursing women and the elderly.  They require an additional 368,000 metric tonnes of cereals and other commodities to be fully implemented.  It can take two to four months for food to get to the beneficiaries once a pledge is made.  We have a press release on that.

**Human Rights and Trafficking

We also have copies upstairs of a speech delivered by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson.  That was yesterday in Geneva, to a panel discussion with the Council of Europe on combating human trafficking.  She told the panel:  “Attempts to deal with trafficking have, thus far, been largely ineffective.  This is not a very positive evaluation, but it is, I believe, an honest one.”  She said more people are being trafficked than ever, and expressed her support for a possible European Convention on Trafficking.

**Basketball without Borders

This July in Istanbul, Turkey, two of the stars of the Sacramento Kings, a US basketball team, will lead a group of Turkish and Greek basketball players in the second annual “Basketball without Borders” camp, which is organized by the US National Basketball Association and the UN Drug Control Programme.  The two players -- Predrag Stojakovic, who is originally from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and has played in Greece, and Hidayat Turkoglu, who is Turkish and has played on Turkey’s national team -- will coach this year’s camp.  The camp is designed to bring young people together to learn conflict resolution and to encourage them to live a healthy life without drugs.

We have a press release on that.

**Signings

This morning, Botswana signed the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, as well as the Protocols on trafficking in persons and the smuggling of migrants.

**Press Conferences

There will be two press conferences via videolink from Rome on the sixtieth ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).   At 10:45 tomorrow, the Secretary-General and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the President of Italy, will take your questions.  You’ll be in this room, they’ll be in Rome.  And then at 12:45, Arthur Robinson, the President of Trinidad and Tobago, and Emma Bonino, Member of the European Parliament, will give a press conference in this room.

No questions?  Good.  Oh --

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Not so fast.  This Dutch Government commissioned report on Srebrenica, which says that the UN failed to give troops the support they needed, there were inadequate resources and faulted the policy of the UN.  Is there a response to this particular report, this definitive one?

Spokesman:  We don’t see any contradiction between the Secretary-General’s report on Srebrenica and the summary of this Dutch report, which I understand is some 7,000 pages long and we haven’t yet seen the full text.  The tragedy of Srebrenica should never be repeated.  That’s why we feel this Dutch report deserves a detailed examination and we’ll be giving it that.  The Secretary-General’s report that I’ve already mentioned has studied in depth the United Nations actions.  However, it did not examine the role of national policies in this tragedy.  Consequently, the Secretary-General welcomes the Dutch report, which does deal with that issue.  I want to say that the UN cooperated fully with the Dutch report.  We gave the investigators full access to UN documentation concerning the fall of Srebrenica.  So it would be premature for us, I think, to say anything more at this point, but we will be studying that 7,000-page document and we may eventually have a comment to make.

Question:  Despite you having just said that, one of the things you mentioned was that they did examine the role of national policies.  One of the findings, apparently, is that there was no proof that orders for the slaughter that took place in Srebrenica came from the Serb political leaders in Belgrade.  This kind of conclusion is perhaps something that can be used in Milosevic’s case in the Tribunal.  Is there any comment or thought on this particular finding?

Spokesman:  I couldn’t comment on your quote of one part of this voluminous document.  Give us a chance to study it before we comment further.  Thank you.    

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