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 Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.

Good afternoon.  I understand that we have a group from Okinawa in Japan visiting us today.  Welcome.  Hope you have a good stay at the United Nations. 

**Secretary-General

The Secretary-General is in Rome, as you know, and this morning addressed the opening session of the World Food Summit -- Five Years Later, saying there has been too little progress over the last five years in reducing hunger worldwide. 

“There is no point in making further promises today,” he said.  The Summit must take concrete action to cut in half by 2015 the 800 million people suffering from hunger now.”

He called for help to subsistence farmers by giving them greater access to land, credit and technology to grow more resistant crops.

“Beyond the farm gate,” he added, there must be improvement in rural infrastructure.  “And we must secure a central place for women, who are involved in every stage of food production, working far longer hours than men, and are the key to insure that their families have adequate supplies of food,” he said.

He concluded by saying:  “Hunger is one of the worst violations of human dignity.  In a world of plenty, ending hunger is within our grasp.  Failure to reach this goal should fill every one of us with shame.”

The Secretary-General than began a series of bilateral meetings on the margins of the Summit, starting with a one-on-one with the President of Sierra Leone, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.

He then saw Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia.  At the onset of that meeting, they discussed the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the upcoming meeting of the G-8 countries in Canada.  Then they met privately.

His next appointment was with the President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo.  They reviewed the security situation in West Africa and specifically developments in Liberia as they affected the region as a whole.  The Secretary-General said that no one wants to invest in a bad neighbourhood, therefore he hoped that in the next 18 months the conflicts in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo could be resolved and the continent could have a more peaceful image to encourage foreign investment.

He also had meetings with the Vice Prime Minister of China and the Presidents of Colombia, Togo and Eritrea.

He also met with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.  James Morris, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, joined the Secretary-General for that meeting.  They discussed ways to speed up food aid to Zimbabwe and the other southern African countries currently on the brink of famine.

A meeting with South African President Thabo Mbeki was also on his programme for today.

**World Food Summit

In addition to the Secretary-General, the Summit heard from a number of other speakers including the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Jacques Diouf, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson.

Diouf said hunger had a heavy negative impact on the economies of countries that it afflicts, and causes about one per cent per year loss in growth due to reduced productivity.  “Eliminating hunger is a moral imperative,” he said, “pertaining to the most basic of human rights, the right to exist.”

The number of undernourished, he went on to say, has fallen by just

6 million per year instead of the 22 million needed to achieve the goals set at the World Food Summit in 1996 and echoed in the Millennium Declaration.

Mary Robinson added that the slow pace of reducing the world’s hungry was morally and legally unacceptable.  She said the goal to free humanity from hunger was within reach, but insufficient national and international efforts meant the right to food was far from being realized.

The Summit, which continues until Thursday, is being attended by some

80 heads of State or Government.

We have press releases from the FAO and the Mary Robinson's statement upstairs.  The Secretary-General's statement, as you know, was made available to you earlier.

**Afghanistan

Turning to Afghanistan, the opening session of the Emergency Loya Jirga, which should have begun at 3 p.m. today in Kabul, was postponed for 24 hours.  The Special Independent Commission for the Convening of the Emergency Loya Jirga attributed the delay to logistic and preparation setbacks.

Abdul Salam Rahimi, a member of the Commission, said that the opening session would now start at 3 p.m. tomorrow, that's 11 June.  Mr. Rahimi said the delay was due to an incomplete final voting list for the Loya Jirga.  The most important task at hand now, he said, was to continue preparation of that list so that it would be ready for tomorrow.  Mr. Rahimi further stressed that the delay was not due to security or political issues. 

We would like to remind you that this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. in this room, a senior United Nations official will give an off-the-record briefing on the situation in Afghanistan.  That's at 4:30 p.m. here in room 226.  [That briefing was later cancelled.]

**United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) meanwhile announced that without fresh contributions it will run out of funding for its operation in Afghanistan by the end of July and will have to consider some very hard choices, including possibly reducing or even halting assistance to future returnees. 

The UNHCR requires $271 million through the end of the year but has so far only received $118 million.  With the returnees surpassing the 1.1 million mark this week, the current homeward movement of Afghans is already one of the biggest and swiftest voluntary repatriation programmes ever undertaken by UNHCR.

Although a record number of Afghan refugees have made the journey back home so far, UNHCR says that they still constitute only about 25 per cent of the estimated 4 million Afghan refugees forced to flee their country by nearly a quarter-century of conflict and instability.

**Security Council

Here in New York, the Security Council as you know has not scheduled any consultations or meetings today.

The Security Council's Working Group on Africa has scheduled a meeting this afternoon at 3 p.m.

**International Atomic Energy Agency

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today began a search for two abandoned Strontium 90 generators in the western part of Georgia.  About

80 people, including radiation experts from the IAEA, India, France, Turkey and the United States will take part in the search.

Such highly radioactive Strontium 90 sources were used as thermo-electric generators for communication stations in remote areas.  Six have been recovered so far, and it is believed that two more are missing in the designated area to be surveyed.

The IAEA has been working with Georgia since 1997 to upgrade levels of radiation safety and security in the country.  Today’s search marks the first operational phase of an action plan to conduct radiological surveys of selected areas in Georgia.

**International Labour Organization

The Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO) said today in Geneva that the Office would establish an urgent plan for creating jobs in the occupied Arab territories, and appealed to Palestinians and Israelis to “take the risk of embarking on social dialogue” to achieve peace.

In his address to the 90th International Labour Conference, Juan Somavia said “with your backing, I commit the Office to urgently put in place an expanded technical cooperation programme for Arab workers and other constituents of the occupied territories.”

In a review of ILO activities over the past three years, the Director-General said “a fresh breeze of creativity is blowing through the ILO.”

He cited a host of unprecedented activities undertaken by the ILO since he became Director-General in 1999, including the establishment of new programmes on gender, HIV/AIDS, job creation, technical assistance and health and safety, as wellas a widening of the ILO’s initiatives aimed at promoting decent work and greater support for core labour standards.

The meeting, which concludes on 20 June, is being attended by delegates from 175 ILO member States, which include representatives of governments as well as worker and employer organizations.

A press release with more information is available upstairs.

**Kosovo

From Kosovo in a press release issued today, the United Nations mission in Kosovo announced the appointment of Nenad Radosavljevic as Senior Adviser in the Office of Returns and Communities.

The Senior Adviser will be playing an important role in helping shape policies aimed at facilitating returns and integration of ethnic minorities into mainstream society in Kosovo.

He is 40 years old and a former member of the Kosovo Assembly.

For more information, there's a press release on this subject upstairs.

**World Summit for Sustainable Development

The fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on Sustainable Development ended in the early hours of Saturday, deciding that its chairman, Emil Salim of Indonesia, should facilitate agreement on all outstanding issues in the draft implementation plan to be transmitted to the Summit in Johannesburg in August.

Discussion on the draft plan reached agreement on a number of areas, about 80 per cent of the final text, including issues such as poverty eradication, changing patterns of consumption and production and protecting and managing natural resources.  Agreement was not reached on areas dealing with the means of implementation of that plan.

**Press Releases

I have two press releases to flag to you.  The World Food Programme (WFP) today said the United States has contributed an additional 100,000 metric tonnes of food aid to its 2002 assistance programme in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  According to the WFP, the United States contribution will prevent a rupturing of the aid pipeline to that country next month, but would not necessarily help avert a major humanitarian crisis later in the year.

WFP has appealed to the international community to increase its aid pledges to the DPRK, saying an additional 150,000 metric tonnes of food aid were still needed to enable it to fully implement its emergency assistance operation.  The WFP’s assistance programme is trying to feed 6.4 million of the country’s most vulnerable people.

And the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today said that in an effort to avoid a repeat of the suffocating smog caused by the forest fires in

1997-1998, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) today signed the Agreement on Trans-boundary Haze Pollution.  The agreement, drafted with the assistance of the UNEP, is aimed to help the South-East Asian States better monitor and prevent smoke from forest fires.

There are press releases on these two subjects you can pick up upstairs.

**Press Conferences

At 3 p.m. Sardar Qayyum Khan, Chairman of the National Kashmir Committee and former President and Prime Minister of AZAD Kashmir; Mushahid Hussain, former Federal Minister for Information of Pakistan; and Mr. P.K. Shahani from the National Kashmir Committee will brief here and refreshments will be served at the UNCA Club after the briefing.

And tomorrow at 11 a.m. the report of the Independent Panel of Eminent Persons on the Review of the United Nations New Agenda for Development of Africa in the 1990s will be launched at a press conference sponsored by the Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa and Least Developed Countries.

And that's what I have for you today.  Does anybody have any questions?  If not, have a great afternoon.  Thank you.

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