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 Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.

**Secretary-General

Good afternoon.  The Secretary-General has begun his visit to Moscow.  Before leaving Kiev earlier today, he had an early meeting with former Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin, now the Russian Ambassador to Ukraine.

He then went to the Ukrainian Parliament, where he congratulated the members on their recent election and praised Ukraine's transition to democracy.  He said change is difficult, but urged them not to get discouraged.

He said he was pleased by the initiatives taken by the nation’s leadership to deal aggressively with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and by the active role being played by young Ukrainians, who are the most affected by it.

He pledged to continue to pressure the international community to meet its commitment in the effort to help Ukraine overcome the results of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

The Secretary-General then delivered a speech before the full Parliament, saying what a great pleasure it was to see first-hand how Ukraine was being transformed.  For half a century, he went on, the great project of European cooperation had encompassed only part of the continent.  That is like an orchestra playing with brass but no strings, he said.  With the end of the cold war, that had now changed, and Ukraine has been part of that "liberation".

The Secretary-General then flew to Moscow, where he met with members of the Federation Council, which is the upper House of the Russian Parliament, and its newly elected Speaker, Sergei Mironov.  In addition to reviewing a wide range of international issues, the Secretary-General raised the Georgia/Abkhazia issue.  Then, on HIV/AIDS, he said, "all leaders must speak up" on this critical matter.  The Speaker acknowledged that HIV/AIDS was an acute problem in Russia.

Among the items on his programme tomorrow is a meeting with President Vladimir Putin and a working luncheon with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

**Security Council

Here in New York, the Security Council is holding informal consultations on the programme of work for the month of June.  The provisional June programme is posted on the UN Security Council Web site.

Under "other matters" in consultations this morning, Council members are expected to hear a briefing by Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, on the latest situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

And Security Council President Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe of Syria will brief you here following this morning's consultations.

**Secretary-General’s Message to Almaty Conference

The Secretary-General has sent a message to the Summit Meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building in Asia.  In the message delivered by Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Danilo Türk, the Secretary-General again expressed his concern about the worrying tension between India and Pakistan.  “The entire continent would be deeply affected by any new conflict or instability”, he said.

He also said that the aim of conflict prevention must be not merely to postpone violence for a few weeks or months, but to build the foundations of sustainable peace.

We have the message available for you upstairs.  As you know, that meeting is taking place in Almaty in Kazakhstan.

**Deputy Secretary-General

Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette arrived this morning in Bali.  Tomorrow, she will attend the opening of the ministerial segment of the preparatory committee meeting for the UN World Summit for Sustainable Development.

In her address, the Deputy Secretary-General will outline the main issues that will be dealt with at the Summit and the critical work that needs to be done at the Bali meeting.  We have her embargoed speech available upstairs.

The Deputy Secretary-General is later on scheduled to meet with representatives of Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, and other non-governmental organizations.

And later in the evening she's going to attend an event to observe World Environment Day, where she will deliver the message of the Secretary-General for World Environment Day, in which the Secretary-General expresses his hope that the results of the World Summit will be real and tangible.

The World Summit will open in Johannesburg, as you know, in September.

**Afghanistan

Now turning to Afghanistan, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) announced that 761 delegates have been elected so far in phase II of Loya Jirga elections.  Twenty of them are women.  The selection process is expected to be completed by tomorrow.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) meanwhile has put the latest figure of refugees returned at 870,000.  The UNHCR says that the newest asylum country to see its Afghans start to leave is Kyrgyzstan, where 33 Afghans boarded buses yesterday for a two-day trip home that will take them through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.  Kyrgyzstan shelters some 2,000 Afghan refugees, of whom about 100 so far have said that they're ready to go home.

You can read more about this in today's briefing notes from Kabul.

**United Nations Environment Programme

 The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) today announced that its Executive Director Klaus Töpfer will meet with Israeli and Palestinian environment ministers late June and early July to launch an environmental study of the Palestinian territories by UNEP experts.  He will also consult with a range of environmental experts. 

The study will outline the state of the environment and identify major areas of environmental damage requiring urgent attention.

It will be based on interviews with officials and experts and a review of existing data.  If necessary, the study will be followed up by field visits aimed at generating proposals on how to improve environmental conditions.

The decision to assess the environmental situation in the Palestinian territories was taken unanimously in February 2002 by the UNEP Governing Council at its seventh special session.

**Terrorism

In Vienna today, the symposium on combating international terrorism is entering its final day.  This morning, there were two panel discussions.  The first was on the role of international cooperation and technical assistance in implementing international conventions and protocols dealing with terrorism.  The second dealt with the contribution of regional and subregional instruments to global action on terrorism.

This afternoon, the panel discussion centred on the relevance of the expertise of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in the areas of transnational organized crime, drug trafficking and money laundering, and how this can be used in the global fight against terrorism.  The symposium is in its wrap-up session and we expect to have more information later on in the day.

**Liberia

Turning to Africa, fighting and general instability in Liberia are driving thousands of people into exile, according to the High Commissioner for Refugees.  The overall camp population of Liberian refugees in Sierra Leone has now topped the 20,000 mark.  Thousands have also fled into Guinea, bringing the number there to 13,000.

And then the UNHCR, in its briefing in Geneva today, also reported that it is still pressing the Kenyan authorities to either move Somali refugees in a volatile border area to a more secure location or to existing refugee camps farther away from that area.

**Press Releases

A few other press releases -- with almost one person in seven without enough food to eat, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today said that an additional $24 billion must be publicly invested in poor countries every year in order to achieve the 1996 World Food Summit objective of reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half, or to 400 million, by 2015.  The goal was also reflected in the Millennium Declaration.

The FAO is calling for the additional public investments in line with a new global "Anti-Hunger Programme” which it has launched on the eve of the "World Food Summit:  Five years later”, to be held in Rome from 10 to 13 June.

We have a press release with more information.

In a joint report today, the FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP) meanwhile said approximately 515,000 people in the southern and central regions of Mozambique were facing severe food insecurity, and food aid totalling more than 70,000 tonnes between now and April 2003 is required.

The World Health Organization today issued a fact sheet on botulism, a disease caused by extremely potent toxins found in soils, sediments and marine waters.  The same toxins are used in a purified and diluted form for cosmetic applications as an anti-wrinkle treatment called Botox.  We have the fact sheet upstairs.

Finally, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is scheduled to open its forty-fifth session in Vienna tomorrow and to hold consultations until 14 June 2002.

**Signings

And on signings today, Japan will deposit its instrument of acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  That's happening here this afternoon.

**Office of Iraq Programme

And just in is a weekly report.  The figures released by the Office of the Iraq Programme for the week ending 31 May show a surge in Iraqi oil exports from the previous week’s low of 9 million barrels to 15.3 million barrels.  The week’s exports netted an estimated $333 million in revenue, at current prices and rate of exchange.

Phase 11 of the programme ended on 29 May, and final figures for that phase indicate exports of almost 226 million barrels of oil for an estimated revenue of about $4.59 billion. 

A new phase of the programme, phase 12, began on 30 May, as decided by Security Council resolution 1409, and it will end on 25 November.

We have the full text of the Office of the Iraq Programme weekly update upstairs as usual.

**Press Conferences

Two press conferences to let you know about.  Right after this briefing, in about 10 minutes, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Marta Santos Pais of the Innocenti Research Centre in Florence will brief on the report entitled Birth Registration - Right from the Start.  The report, which is issued today, says that millions of babies go unregistered at birth, denying them an official national identity.  In the year 2000, an estimated 50 million babies were not registered, that is 41 per cent of births in the world.  So you can hear more about this in just a few minutes.

And at 1 p.m. as I mentioned, Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe of Syria, the current Security Council President, will brief you on the programme of work for the month of June.

**Nadia Younes

And for those of you who may be familiar with Nadia Younes, who's the Chief of Protocol -- she is also a former veteran as you know from the Spokesman's Office -- the World Health Organization (WHO) today has announced that she will assume the title of Executive Director for External Relations for WHO.  That means that she will be one of nine such Executive Directors reporting to Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland.

**World Cup

And finally we have one note on the World Cup relating to today’s match between the Republic of Korea and Poland.  We have one UN mission which has the distinction of having a Polish Chief of Mission and a Force Commander from the Republic of Korea.

We’ve been told that earlier today in Nicosia, Cyprus, Chief of Mission Zbigniew Wlosowicz and Force Commander Major-General Jin Ha Hwang, watched together as the Republic of Korea beat Poland 2 to 0.

The atmosphere during the game was said to have been calm and tense.

That's all I have for you today.  Anything for me?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Do you know if Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who's heading to Washington this coming week, spoke before with the Secretary-General concerning the new Middle East peace process?  Do you know if the Secretary-General will meet with the Egyptian President in New York while he’s visiting the United States?

Associate Spokesperson:  As you know, the Secretary-General will be out of the country.  So I don't think the timing would work out on that. 

As for his conversations, he is in constant touch, as you know, with the leaders in the Middle East.  I will have to check with you when his last conversation was with him.  [The Associate Spokesperson later announced that the last time the Secretary-General spoke by phone with President Mubarak was last Friday.]

Question:  In Africa, in addition to fighting in Liberia, there’s also fighting in Madagascar.  The fighting has intensified, people are dying and troops are being moved.  I know that the United Nations supports the efforts of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), but the parties are not responding to the OAU

efforts.  What measures are being taken by the United Nations in the framework of the Secretary-General’s desire to move from a culture of response to a culture of prevention?

Associate Spokesperson:  Well, I think you pointed out that the United Nations role in dealing with this particular conflict has been one in support of the OAU, which is taking the front seat in trying to bring peace, bring a solution to that situation.

I understand that there is now some discussion over the next such OAU mediation effort, and I'll try to find out for you what the United Nations role would be in connection with that latest thinking going on with the OAU.

Question:  Do you have any official UN panel, and who's going to be on it for the talks with Iraq?

Associate Spokesperson:  Nothing more than we had before the delegates.  This has not been finalized yet.  We've mentioned to you that it would involve the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but other than that, I don't have any other firm names.

 Question:  How do you reconcile "calm" and "tense"?  Was this Cyprus?  Which mission was that?

Associate Spokesperson:  This was the United Nations mission -- you might have missed it -- in Nicosia.  It was the head of the Mission and the Force Commander watching the game, and that’s how the spokesman there described their viewing session.

Question:  Does WHO know the policy on smoking of its new Executive Director, Ms. Younes?  I don't know, she’s not here to defend herself, but this chain-smoking United Nations official would be in contradiction to the WHO's non-smoking policy.  Is she going to be based in Geneva?

Associate Spokesperson:  That's where the job is, yes. 

* *** *