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, and Jan Fischer, Spokesman for the General Assembly President.

Spokesman for Secretary-General

Good afternoon.

**Children’s Summit

Today is the final day of the special session on children, and at 4 p.m. Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), will hold a press conference in this room to wrap up the work of the session.  Jan will have more for you on today’s events.

**Appointment

The Secretary-General has decided to appoint Tun Myat, of Myanmar, as the new United Nations Security Coordinator.

You’ll recall that the General Assembly recently approved the Secretary-General’s request to establish a full-time position for a United Nations Security Coordinator, at the level of Assistant Secretary-General.  So far, the post had been one of the many responsibilities performed by Benon Sevan, who is also the Executive Director of the Office of the Iraq Programme.

Tun Myat has most recently been serving, since April 2000, as the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq.  Prior to that, he had worked for

22 years at the World Food Programme (WFP).

We have a full biographical note available upstairs.

**Security Council

The Security Council has no meetings and no consultations scheduled for today.  We will inform you of the Council’s programme for Monday as soon as it is confirmed.

**Retreat

The Secretary-General will leave at 5 p.m. today for a retreat with Security Council members at a conference centre just outside of New York City.  This is the fourth such Security Council retreat.  They have been taking place annually since 1999.

The theme this year will be "Responsibilities of the Security Council", and will include "The Responsibility to Protect", which was the subject of a Canadian-funded study of earlier this year by a commission co-chaired by Gareth Evans and

Mohammed Sahnoun.  The Secretary-General will open the session with remarks, and the retreat will continue through tomorrow at 6 p.m.

Then on Sunday, the Secretary-General will leave for a three-destination tour of Cyprus, Indonesia and East Timor, stopping initially in London.

[The following item was omitted from the briefing:]

**Srebrenica Relief

UN Development Programme Administrator Mark Malloch Brown and the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jacques Klein, will host a pledging conference for donors to support the Srebrenica Regional Recovery Initiative, the $12.5 million effort to revitalize that region over a three-year period.

The Initiative is designed to deal with four main areas needed for the recovery of the Srebrenica region:  improving economic development, with a focus on agribusiness; building housing and infrastructure; enhancing municipal governance; and supporting civil society.

The pledging conference will take place from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Secretariat, with attendees to include Queen Noor and representatives of the Bosnian Government and its entities.

Both Mark Malloch Brown and Jacques Klein will be the guests at the noon briefing on Monday, where they will talk to you about international efforts to assist Srebrenica.

**East Timor

In East Timor today, Special Representative of the Secretary-General Sergio Vieira de Mello delivered a farewell address to East Timor’s Legislative Assembly. He listed major achievements by the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor in many areas, such as government, economy, health and education.  He said, “While recognizing the tremendous progress that the East Timorese have made to date, we are equally aware that the development process has really only begun.” He then went on to explain the role of the successor mission, the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET).

We have the full transcript of his farewell address available upstairs.

Also on East Timor, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that more than 1,000 refugees have returned to East Timor during the first 10 days of May, bringing the total repatriation figure to well over 205,000 refugees.

East Timor’s independence ceremonies Web site was launched today on www.easttimoridc.org.  It contains a wealth of information on key contacts, events, protocol and media. 

**SRSG for Children and Armed Conflict in Angola

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, will visit Angola from 13 to 17 May to evaluate the needs of children after 30 years of conflict.  During his visit, Otunnu will meet with President Eduardo dos Santos and other senior government officials, as well as with the opposition, civil society and religious groups and NGOs.  Among the topics for discussion will be child soldiers, the lack of humanitarian access to children and the need for adequate protection and physical security for children.

We have a press release for that.

**Small Island Developing States Meeting

As part of the run-up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August, the Alliance of Small Island States is meeting today in Montego Bay, Jamaica, to discuss ways and means of shoring up their capacity to address the environmental risks they face because of their small size.  The meeting is being hosted by the United Nations Development Programme and the Government of Jamaica, and includes representatives from small island developing States, donor countries, United Nations organizations and civil society.

We have a press release on that.

**Refugee Trends

Today’s briefing notes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees draws attention to five developments.  These are returns to Afghanistan, refugee flows from Senegal to the Gambia, flight from fighting inside Liberia, local settlement in Mexico, and resettlement from Nauru to New Zealand.

You can pick up the notes in my Office if you are interested in any of those topics.

**Press Releases

One press release to highlight.  The World Health Organization today announced the publication of a new study on violence in health-care workplaces.  The study shows that this is a serious problem in many countries, crossing borders, cultures, work settings and occupational groups.  The research is part of a joint programme of the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, and the International Council of Nurses and Public Services International, which aims to provide guidance for the development of international, national and local guidelines to eliminate violence in health-care workplaces.

**Peacekeeping Operations

We have an update that comes out periodically, on the number of peacekeepers serving in now 15 United Nations peacekeeping operations throughout the world as at the end of April.  The number is pretty steady from previous reports –- 46,799 military and police personnel coming from 86 countries.

**Budget

One budget payment today:  the Democratic Republic of the Congo became the 73rd Member State to pay its 2002 regular budget dues in full with a payment of just over $44,000.

**Signings

As there was another slew of treaty signings today, I won’t list them all here, but we’ve put them on paper.  You can pick them up at my Office.  Jan will have a rundown of the totals signed and ratified this week.

**Press Conferences and Week Ahead

Today’s press conferences, again, are too many to mention here.  The list is posted on our Web site.  There are no press conferences scheduled, so far, for Monday.  And we have our Week Ahead for you, which you can pick up at my Office.

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Did I hear you say that Gareth Evans will be addressing the retreat?

Answer:  I mentioned that he and Mohammed Sahnoun had co-chaired a commission that had produced a study called “The Responsibility to Protect”.  I know that Mohammed Sahnoun will be at the Security Council retreat this weekend.  I will have to check for you if Gareth Evans will be there.  I did not hear that he would be attending.  And that report came out earlier, I think, this year.

Question:  Can you explain why the Secretary-General chose Tun Myat as a new Security Coordinator?

Answer:  I think, he has been pleased with Tun Myat’s work in Iraq.  He, of course, has extensive experience in the field, not only in the work he has done for us in Iraq, but in his previous long career in the World Food Programme.  So he was sensitive, I think, to staff security concerns, both at Headquarters locations and in the field, and the good solid record of performance in the United Nations system.

Question:  Is there any parallel example to the “nation-birthing” role that the United Nations played in East Timor?

Answer:  I do not know.  I think you could probably look at Cambodia as a similar example, but not exactly a parallel one, where the United Nations undertook extensive responsibility for the administration, although, of course,  it was not a country about to be born, but a well established one.  Namibia -– 1989-1990 -– where it was territory becoming a new nation.  The United Nations had less responsibility for administration in that case.  It monitored South Africa’s administration in the last year of transition to independence.  So those are two examples I could think of that are similar, but not identical.

Question:  What have you heard in terms of progress on the outcome document of the special session?

Answer:  We will leave that to Jan, who is the Spokesman for the General Assembly President, if you don’t mind.

Question:  Has the Secretary-General extended his communication to Israel and Palestinian Authority regarding the inquiry into Jenin and Israeli activities in the West Bank?

Answer:  No, not yet.  I told you yesterday, when that happens, I will give you heads-up, but it has not gone out yet.

I have just been told that Gareth Evans will be at the Security Council retreat, along with Mohammed Sahnoun.

Question:  Concerning the fact-finding group of the General Assembly, is it going to be the same people?

Answer:   A few days ago, I explained that the Secretariat will produce the investigation that the General Assembly asked for, so it is qualitatively different from what the Security Council had endorsed as an idea.  It is not going to be a fact-finding commission on Jenin camp -– it is going to be a Secretariat gathering of available information on Jenin town and other Palestinian towns.

Question:  Any read-out on the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visit?

Answer:  I do not have that, but I will try to get it for you.  [It was a tête-à -tête.]

Question:  Will you be going with the Secretary-General on this trip, Fred?

Answer:  My new Deputy Hua Jing will be on her maiden voyage as a spokeswoman for the Secretary-General on this trip.

Spokesman for General Assembly President

Good afternoon.

Yesterday, on the second day of the special session on children, the Assembly heard statements by 11 heads of State or government, by seven vice-presidents or deputy prime ministers, by 33 representatives at the ministerial level, and by 11 heads of delegation.  The representatives of two observers also spoke as did the heads of four United Nations agencies.

This morning at 9 o’clock, we started out with the President of Haiti who will be followed by another 32 speakers, including the Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlement Programme.  In the afternoon, there are even more speakers.  We are expecting to hear 37 Member States, one observer State and more than a dozen entities. Yesterday, I said that all 189 Member States were inscribed to speak, but this is no longer the case.  It looks like we may be one or two short.

During a press briefing yesterday afternoon, the President of Mexico and the President of Finland gave an account of the discussions that took place during round table 2.  Two children from Rwanda and Bangladesh also participated.  There is a press release out on that round table.

The President of Zambia and the Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nepal are co-chairing round table 3, which is still in progress.  Two children from Yugoslavia and Suriname are participating.  There will not be a press briefing after this round table, but we will try to make a summary available to you later on.

I have had a lot of calls this morning regarding the outcome document “A World Fit for Children”.  Apparently, negotiations continued until 4 a.m., and I have heard both optimistic and not so optimistic evaluations, so let me just say that even if there is an agreement on the text, it looks as if it will be a long day.  The other afternoons, we have heard 34 speakers, and the meeting has gone on till around 8 p.m., or even later.  Today, there are some 50 speakers on the list, after which there will be a report from the three round tables, and only then will the outcome document be taken up –- provided there is one, of course.  I would also ask Carol Bellamy who will be here after this briefing, what she knows about the outcome document.

Quite a few of you have asked if I could compile some statistics on the special session, and I have received quite a bit of input from various departments, but have not had a chance to put it together yet.  I hope to do so in the early afternoon and then make it available to you in hardcopy.  I will squawk it.  It will be statistics, such as the number of passes issued.  I can say right now that we have issued 2,656 passes to delegates, including 558 to child delegates, 1,721 to NGOs, more than to 800 media and 600 to other representatives.  There will also be statistics on coverage on the web, radio and TV and whatever else I can put together.

Question:  When the summit ends, and the outcome document is not ready, what do you do?

Answer:  I think, it is too early to speculate about it.  There are various options, and the Member States themselves will decide whether they want to stop the clock, or call a halt and start again tomorrow, or leave it unfinished.  There are a lot of different scenarios, and I really do not want to go into them, because I really don’t know.

Question:  What about the draft resolution on Palestinian children?

Answer:  Any kind of action in the special session would take place after we have heard about the round tables.  Any kind of paperwork -– draft resolutions, amendments -– would be after that report.  We do not know if it will come up.

Question:  In the statistical analysis you are preparing, do you have treaty signings?

Answer:  Yes, I have asked the Office of Legal Affairs to give us a total update on the number of relevant treaty actions that have taken place over the last three days.

Question:  Could you repeat the number of NGO passes issued?

Answer:  Yes, it was 1,721.

Question:  What are the countries that will not be speaking?

Answer:  It looks more or less certain that Dominica will not be speaking.  There is a question about the Bahamas, but it is still too early to say whether they will be speaking or not.  I think they are scheduled to speak just before

1 p.m.

Thank you.

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