DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY THE OFFICE OF THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL

Following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by Marie Okabe, Associate Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good afternoon.  I’m sorry, I am a little late.

Middle East/Secretary-General Letter

Yesterday afternoon, the Secretary-General, in a letter to the President of the Security Council, detailed his efforts to implement resolution 1405 (2002), which welcomed his initiative to develop accurate information regarding recent events in Jenin through a fact-finding team.

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast briefed the Security Council on the letter, in which, he told reporters afterwards, the Secretary-General informed the Council of his intention to disband the fact-finding team today.

Prendergast said that the decision was “an acceptance of the reality that it’s not possible to do the job properly without the full cooperation of the Government of Israel”.  The Secretary-General, he said, has come to his decision because “he believes that the objections that the Government of Israel has to the deployment of the mission are fundamental objections, and therefore they are most unlikely to be overcome”.

We have copies of Mr. Prendergast’s comments available upstairs.  And as the Security Council remains actively seized of this matter, we do not yet have any announcement of the Secretary-General’s formal decision.

Security Council

After receiving the letter, yesterday, the Security Council -- it was around 5 o’clock -- went into long consultations on a response.  Two draft resolutions were put on the table:  one by Syria and Tunisia and one by the United States.  None of the resolutions were voted on.

The consultations went on until about 2 a.m., that’s this morning; when the President suggested to adjourn the meeting and reconvene at 10:30 to discuss a letter, drafted by the presidency, from the Council to the Secretary-General.  

And as you know, the Security Council is meeting in closed consultations now.

In addition to the resumption on the discussions on the mission, there’s the programme of work for the month of May and a briefing on latest developments in Ethiopia and Eritrea by Jean-Marie Guehenno, Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations.  The third item is on Somalia.

In the afternoon, consultations are scheduled on Cyprus at 3:30 p.m. with the Secretary-General’s Special Advisor Alvaro de Soto.

'Quartet' Meeting

The Secretary-General is on his way to attend a meeting, which begins at 3 p.m. in the U.S. State Department in Washington, of the “Quartet” dealing with Middle East issues -- a group that will comprise the Secretary-General, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, High Representative for European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.  Also attending the meeting will be Foreign Minister Josep Pique of Spain, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

At about 4:30, the Quartet meeting to discuss the Middle East will be followed by a joint press conference among the principal participants.

Following the press conference, the Secretary-General will return to New York later in this afternoon.

UNRWA

From the Middle East, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA for short, warned today that a humanitarian crisis is looming in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli authorities continue to block the entry of food, medicine and fuel and refuse to relax internal restrictions on the movements of all goods and personnel.

Despite repeated letters of protest from UNRWA to the Israeli authorities, Israel has continued to cite security reasons, and there has been scant improvement in the situation, UNRWA says.

The Agency says its humanitarian operations are being severely hampered in Gaza, and it may not be able to provide the food packages for this month for 127,000 of the most needy families.  In addition, Gaza residents, fearing a major Israeli incursion, have begun to stockpile basic foodstuffs and medicines, pushing prices of those goods up further.

We have a release with more information, as well as another UNRWA release on the efforts by a UN Mine Action Service mission to help clear unexploded ordnance in Jenin.

Iraqi Talks

The talks between the United Nations and Iraq entered the second day today.  There will be several meetings of experts on the issues related on the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission known as UNMOVIC.

The UN team is led by the Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, Hans Blix.  Delegates from the Iraqi side are Dr. Jafaar Dhia Jafaar, Presidential Adviser and General Amir H. Al-Saadi, Adviser from the Presidential Office.

Secretary-General Trip

The Secretary-General will be traveling again this weekend.  He is travelling to Boston this Sunday to receive the Profile in Courage Award.  The Award will be presented by Caroline Kennedy on Monday, 6 May, at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award was created by the Kennedy Library Foundation in 1989 and is presented annually to those in politics who had the courage to make decisions of conscience without fear of the consequences.  "It is this unique kind of courage for which we honour Secretary-General Kofi Annan”, said Caroline Kennedy, President of the Foundation.

"Following the attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001", the citation says, "Kofi Annan led the United Nations in bringing together diverse countries and political forces to combat terrorism, rebuild a nation and broker peace internationally".  The Award is also for Mr. Annan's courage as a peacemaker and his leadership on human rights, UN reform, as well as combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Liberia

Turning to Africa.  The Secretary-General’s third report on Liberia’s compliance with Security Council resolution 1343 of 2001, which formed the basis for the sanctions regime on Liberia, is out on the racks today.  However, the document inadvertently omits the concluding three paragraphs of the Secretary-General’s report, and it will be issued later today with those three paragraphs included.  For those who can’t wait, we can provide you with the concluding paragraphs upstairs after the briefing.

Council Mission

Today the UN Security Council delegation is in Luanda, Angola, where they met with President Eduardo dos Santos for about one hour at noon.

In the morning, they held a closed-door meeting with the inter-Congolese dialogue facilitator, Katumile Masire. 

In a short statement to the press, at the residence of President dos Santos, Ambassador Jean-David Levitte from France and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock from the United Kingdom said that the meeting was "very positive" on the three main aspects of the inter-Congolese dialogue that was being built:  continuation of negotiations, withdrawal of foreign troops and demobilization of combatants.

"What the Security Council wanted to hear from President dos Santos we did:  he will use his influence in the region to try and make sure that the final part of the agreement that is being built will be achieved", they said in the statement.

This afternoon, the Security Council delegation will have a joint meeting with the Political Committee of the Lusaka Cease-fire Agreement.

And tomorrow, the delegation is scheduled to travel to Kampala, Uganda, to meet with President Yoweri Museveni.

We have copies of the note, which includes details of yesterday’s programme.  As you know, yesterday the Council members were in the north-eastern city of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Afghanistan

Also yesterday, we had reported to you yesterday about efforts under way to halt the tensions and fighting in northern Afghanistan.

The UN mission today reports that it has helped broker a security arrangement for Mazar-i-Sharif.

UN mission staff reported that its staff from its office in that northern city met last night with the generals Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad.  They agreed to set up a Security Commission for Mazar.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme today warned in a press release that a new hunger crisis threatens millions of Afghans unless more donations are received soon.  Cash donations are needed immediately to buy food in the region that will help millions of extremely poor Afghans cross the most critical and difficult months of the year before the harvest starts in July.

You can read more about this in the WFP release we have upstairs.

East Timor

On East Timor, representatives of East Timor and Indonesia today completed a joint reconnaissance survey aimed demarcating the countries’ common land borders.

“The fact that the survey took place before East Timor’s independence shows the level of trust and cooperation that now exists between East Timor and Indonesia”, said Nelson Santos, the Director of Bilateral Affairs for East Timor’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.

The findings of the survey will be reported to the Technical Sub-committee on Border Demarcation and Regulation, which is part of a bilateral committee between East Timor and Indonesia.

The launch of this process has been a major goal of the United Nations before the end of the transition period.

ICTY

Earlier today, two men -- former Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic and former prison warden Momcilo Gruban -- were transferred from Serbia to the detention unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague.

Sainovic, who was indicted for his role in crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo in 1999, was said to act as a liaison between former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and various Kosovo Albanian leaders at the time.  He will make his initial appearance before a Tribunal judge tomorrow.

Gruban is accused of supervising guards at the Omarska camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it is alleged that prison conditions were brutal and inhumane for Muslim and Croat prisoners.

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

Press Releases

We also have two other press releases upstairs.  One is on Namibia launching a programme that calls for the services of more than 1,000 national and international UN Volunteers to work with and train Namibians to become teachers, doctors and various other workers in a bid to fight poverty and HIV/AIDS.

And we also have another press release from the World Food Programme, from its Executive Director, James Morris, who calls on heads of State to commit to a global plan for school feeding.  The plan is aimed at the world’s 300 million chronically hungry children and asks States to commit to solving malnutrition and illiteracy.  The special session of the General Assembly on children is expected to address this and other issues next week.

Please pick up the press release if you want more information on that.

Signings

And finally, on signings.  This morning, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia became the 129th country to sign the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

Press Conferences

Press conferences scheduled for today:  at 2:30 p.m., we have Ambassador Patricia Durrant of Jamaica, Chair of the Preparatory Committee and Ms. Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of UNICEF.  They will brief on the status of negotiations and the expected outcome of the special session on Children, which will take place next week between 8-10 May.

And at 3 p.m., Michael McCann, Chief of the Security and Safety Service, and Sonia Lecca, who is the Chief of the Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit, will brief you on the logistical and security arrangements for the special session on children.

These are taking place in this room this afternoon, and there are no press conferences right now scheduled for tomorrow.

And that’s all I have for you today.

Questions and Answers

Question:   In his letter yesterday, the Secretary-General said that he’s intending to disband the team today, or tomorrow -- he said it yesterday, which is today.  Is there a time line to this?  I mean, if by five o’clock, which is 24 hours or twelve midnight, which is the end of today, the Security Council doesn’t agree to anything, what happens then?

Spokesman:  Well, as you know right now, the Council is, as I mentioned, still actively seized on this matter.  So we don’t have an announcement of the decision, but you should expect something in the form of a statement from our office.

Question:   When?

Spokesman:  I can’t tell you that right now, but we’ll let you know as soon as we have an idea.

Question:   There’s been quite a negative response to the signaled intention to disband the mission, particularly in the Arab world.  Has the Secretary-General noted this?  Is he being swayed by it?  Is he taking it into account at all?

Spokesman:  Let me again just clarify the Secretary-General’s position regarding his decision.  The Secretary-General reached this conclusion only reluctantly following the decision by Israel’s Cabinet on 30 April that as long as Israel’s terms had not been met, it would not be possible to begin the clarification process.  And the United Nations, as you know, has not received any formal clarification of Israel’s terms.  The Secretary-General, as he said and as Kieran Prendergast says, feels strongly that an accurate and credible, thorough and balanced report cannot be prepared in the absence of full cooperation from the Government of Israel as well as the Palestinian Authority.  This is a position that has been said a number of times and one that he is standing by.

Question:   Mr. de Soto, who you said was going to brief the Council in the afternoon yesterday, met the Secretary-General.  Do you have anything on that?

Spokesman:  I don’t have a read-out on that meeting.  We can try to get you that, but he will be briefing the Council.  You may try to get him at the stake-out on his way out.

Question:   The draft letter from the President of the Security Council to the Secretary-General calls on him, or asks him to prepare a report of some sort on the facts or whatever information he gathered relating to what happened in Jenin.  Assuming that it’s actually delivered to the Secretary-General, how would he go about that?

Spokesman:  Let’s wait until they act on the letter.  All I know right now is that a draft letter has been submitted by the presidency to the Council and the experts are being consulted, and capitals are being consulted on the letter.  So it doesn’t have a formal status yet.

Question:   One other thing Ambassador Lancry raised yesterday evening were six further points and it seemed to be unclear even after our conversation with Mr. Prendergast, whether these had been formally conveyed to the Secretary-General.  These were, I think, six further conditions that the Israeli Government was raising.  Have these formally been conveyed to his office or not?

Spokesman:  I’d have to check on that for you.

(The Spokesman’s office announced immediately following the briefing that the United Nations had not received any formal clarification of Israel's "terms".)

Question:   A couple of things about the United Nations talks with the Iraqi delegation.  Is there any set schedule for the expert talks?  When they begin, when they break up and so forth?

Spokesman:  The information that I gave you on the talks is really the only information that I have been given.  I don’t think there will be a read-out as such, at least from the Secretariat side today.  As you know, the talks are scheduled to continue tomorrow.  And according to the provisional programme of work for the month of May, which is now being finalized by the Security Council, the Secretary-General is scheduled to brief the Security Council tomorrow afternoon on Iraq.

Question:   Can we at least find out two things?  One, get an announcement or something on when the talks conclude for the day, and find out how long they actually met and who, specifically, was represented on both sides?

Spokesman:  I read to you the representation on both sides.  If you want me to repeat it…

Question:   Oh, so that was the limit of it, was it?  I didn’t know if there was some other…

Spokesman:  That is today’s.  It’s an expert level meeting.  And yes, we can certainly announce the times of when they started and when they end.

(The Spokesman’s office announced immediately following the briefing that the Iraqi talks began at 11 a.m. at the expert level.)

Okay, any other questions?  Have a good afternoon.

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