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 Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good afternoon.

**Iraq

Sorry for the delay.

As you know, the Secretary-General received a letter from Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri on Thursday evening, in response to his letter to the Foreign Minister of 6 August in which he said he looked forward to a formal Iraqi invitation to UN inspectors to return to Baghdad.

Once translated, the six-page letter with a three-page annex was distributed to members of the Security Council.  That happened on Saturday evening, and the Council was expected to take it up, although no date has yet been set to do so. The text was sent to the Secretary-General over the weekend; he is in Ghana, as you may know from press reports.

The Secretary-General's team is studying the long text and has no further comment on it at this time.

**Kuwait Archives

Richard Foran, who is leading the UN team dealing with the return of Kuwaiti archives from Iraq, arrived in Kuwait over the weekend.

Today he met with senior Kuwaiti officials, including Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed al-Sabah.

Mr. Foran is scheduled to remain in the region for the next few days.

**Bertini

Over the weekend, the Secretary-General’s Personal Humanitarian Envoy, Catherine Bertini, continued her visit to the Middle East.

On Saturday, Ms. Bertini and her team travelled to Nablus in the northern West Bank to visit additional Palestinian humanitarian projects.

Sunday was spent with senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.

During those three separate meetings, she discussed with them the humanitarian situation facing the Palestinians and practical steps that could be taken to alleviate that situation.

Today is her last day in the region. She spent part of it in Bethlehem where she met shopkeepers whose businesses have been affected by the closures.

Ms. Bertini also visited stores involved in a pilot project run by the International Committee for the Red Cross, which provides monthly vouchers for some 30,000 needy Palestinian families.

The vouchers, valued at $90 each, can be redeemed for essential food and non-food items.

**Security Council

There are no meetings of the Security Council scheduled for today.

The next item on the schedule are closed consultations on Wednesday on the Secretary-General’s latest report on the repatriation or return of all Kuwaiti and third-country nationals from Iraq.

The High-level Coordinator for Iraq, Yuli Vorontsov, is expected to provide that briefing.

That report is expected to be on the racks tomorrow.

On Wednesday, the Council will also take up the situation in Burundi as well.

**Afghanistan

Following the armed robbery last week of an office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the Afghan town of Ghazni, members of the UN Mission in Afghanistan, as well as UN agencies, have met with the governor of that province, and the regional government has agreed to place armed security outside UN offices there.

The governor also established a department of foreign relations for the province, which will coordinate relationships between international organizations and the regional government on political, security and humanitarian issues.

We have more details in the Sunday briefing notes from Kabul, which also mention that the level of Afghans returning to their country has levelled off this month at 50,000 returns a week, down from nearly 80,000 people returning home on the second week of July.

**Inauguration of Makeni District Office – Sierra Leone

The Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Operations and Management, Behrooz Sadry, and the Minister of Local Government and Community Development, Sidique Brima, on Saturday officiated at the hand-over of the offices and residence of the Senior District Officer (SDO) -- the highest district government official -– in Makeni, Sierra Leone. 

In his address, Mr. Sadry said the inauguration marked the attainment of

“a definitive benchmark” in the restoration of civil authority in the northern province, especially as Makeni was once the headquarters of the former Revolutionary United Front (RUF).  The restoration of civil authority, which started with the deployment of the Sierra Leone Police and the return of paramount chiefs, culminated in the return of key provincial and district officials throughout the country.

We have a press release from the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone with more information.

**Mexico IDPs

Francis Deng, the Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, yesterday began a 10-day visit to Mexico to obtain a better understanding of the situation of internal displacement in that country.

During his stay, he is expected to meet with government officials and representatives of human rights groups and is also expected to visit several communities of internally displaced people in the state of Chiapas.

His findings and recommendations will be presented to the fifty-ninth session of the Commission on Human Rights as well as to the Secretary-General.

We have additional details in a press release.

**Palestinian Meeting

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People is convening an international conference on Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People.  And that will take place in late September here at UN Headquarters.

The theme of this meeting, which will take place on 23 and 24 September, is “End the Occupation!”

The conference will aim to provide civil society organizations from all regions of the world with an opportunity to exchange views on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, and renew efforts to coordinate their activities and develop action-oriented proposals in support of the Palestinian people.

A provisional programme is available in my office.

**UNESCO

Also available upstairs is a statement released late Friday from the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, better known as UNESCO, in which he calls on the international community to mobilize in the rehabilitation of the cultural heritage sites damaged in several European towns by recent floods.

Koichiro Matsuura says that UNESCO will do everything in its power to “help preserve the region’s damaged treasures, which are vital to the memory of humanity and to the identity of the numerous communities rooted in the region”.

We have the full statement available upstairs.

**Annan Honoured

We normally don’t mention where the Secretary-General is when he is on holiday, but I would like to mention one very special event he attended last Friday in his home country of Ghana.

Kofi Annan, whose father is Ashanti, was given the title of Busumuru by the Ashanti people, becoming the first person to receive that title, in recognition of his service to world peace. A Busumuru, we’ve been told, is a very senior adviser to the Ashanti.

This isn’t the first traditional title he has received in an African country, however. You’ll recall that last year, while visiting Sierra Leone, he also received a traditional title, equivalent to a “great warrior”, also in recognition of his work.

**World Summit on Sustainable Development

Finally, as you know, the World Summit on Sustainable Development will begin next Monday in Johannesburg, South Africa.  And for the next two weeks, we would like to highlight for you each day, projects from all over the world that illustrate what the United Nations is doing in the five areas that the Secretary-General has highlighted as the key areas of focus for the Summit.  Those five areas are water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity, and we hope that using the acronym WEHAB will help you remember them.

The first project we want to highlight for you is in Kenya, involving pollution being carried into the Indian Ocean by the second largest river in Kenya, the Athi River.

The story begins upstream at the Nairobi Dam, whose lake is fed by waste from a nearby slum where some 800,000 people now live.

Rich organic and sewage waste feeds a fast-growing water weed called the water hyacinth, which has choked the dam and killed fish and other mammals living there.

Below the dam, the Ngong’ River picks up chemical and other pollutants from Nairobi's industrial district as it flows via the Athi River out to the Indian Ocean, destroying the mangrove ecosystem at the coast.

People from different social sectors, from the Yacht Club to the Kibera slum, decided to do something about it. The two-year Nairobi Dam Initiative was launched to repair the environment, improve people's health and earn some money in the process.

It involves building a wetland at the site of the dam to clean and recycle wastewater from the slum. Less pollution means eventual control over the growth of the water hyacinth.

Factory owners downstream are being educated on how to control industrial waste.

And an expert from the Far East has been in to show how the water hyacinth can be harvested and used to make rattan-type furniture.

The result is environmentally friendly and sustainable.

For more information, see the UN Development Programme's Web site.

That’s all I have for you today.  Yes, Mohammed?

Questions and Answers

Question:   Fred, could you please give us more details about Mr. Sabri’s letter to the Secretary-General?

Spokesman:  I cannot tell you any more than I have already told you.  Copies have gone to the Council.  A copy went out to the Secretary-General over the weekend.  His own people are studying it.  And we expect the Council to take it up, but we don’t know when.  Greg?

Question:   The last time a letter was received the Secretary-General sought guidance from the Council and went to meet them.  Is that past going to repeat itself, and if so, will it be after he returns to New York, just in terms of timings?

Spokesman:  I don’t think he expects the Council to wait for his return.  After all, he will be going on this trip through southern Africa, starting this weekend, ending up at the Johannesburg Summit.  So, he won’t be back for a few weeks yet.  But he has been working very closely with the Council.  And I think he will continue to consult with them, either in person or through someone on his staff who will attend the Council consultations once they are scheduled.

Question:   Fred, yesterday there was an article in Newsweek (that) mentions some United Nations memo that mentions a lot of Taliban people killed as prisoners by the Northern Alliance. What can you say about it?  It’s a United Nations memo.

Spokesman:  The story on the alleged killing of a large number of Taliban soldiers who were reportedly kept in a sealed container in the heat was carried some time earlier by another publication.  I believe that this article in Newsweek is the first to mention a United Nations document.  We did have an exchange this morning with Manoel de Almeida, who is the spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi in Kabul. He said he had no information today on the document.  He was trying to track it down.  So it’s a Kabul story.  But as of mid-day today, they were unable to shed any light on it and they are continuing to look into it.  So, in fact, I have nothing to add.

Question:   So I ask maybe tomorrow?

Spokesman:  Yes. Manoel said he’d get back to us tomorrow.

Question:   The NPR report suggested that the, said, if I understood it, because it was such a shock to hear that they were attempting, they were being shot as they were attempting to surrender.  But, you’re saying that this goes back to a time when there was a problem keeping…

Spokesman:  I don’t know the details, I mean these were all allegations and we’re focusing today on a United Nations document that apparently has some information relevant to the investigation into this case.

Question:   Would that involve clarifying…

Spokesman:  Well, I don’t know what would be able to be confirmed and what not.  Greg?

Question:   You were saying it’s a document that’s circulating in Kabul, it’s not something that’s appeared this side of the water at all?  It has not reached Headquarters?    

Spokesman:  No, well, it’s described by Newsweek as a United Nations document.  But the spokesman in Kabul has not been able to identify the document that Newsweek has mentioned. So, we have nothing, really, to add today.  Maybe by tomorrow Manoel will be able to shed more light on it.

Question:   Fred, regarding the freedom of journalists.  We do get reports of brutality of journalists in third world countries.  But if the inhabitants of those countries, living in a civilized country like the U.S., don’t change the behaviour, like our [UNCA] President. Mr. Azim Mian, was beaten for writing an article on Saturday.

Spokesman:  I don’t have any details on what might have happened to

Mr. Mian, but I would hope that the local police authorities would look into any events along the lines that you have described.

Okay? Are we finished? Yeah?

Question:   Fred, can you explain to me how a document could be circulating in Kabul and the United Nations spokesman wouldn’t know anything about it?

Spokesman:  This is a document that apparently got into the hands of a journalist.  It doesn’t mean it necessarily came through the spokesman’s office in Kabul.  So, I don’t think that the spokesman has been able to verify what document it is that has passed into the hands of Newsweek.  He’s trying to find that out right now.  He only saw the article today.

Question:   Thank you.

Spokesman:  Thank you.

[The Spokesman’s Office later announced that the Presidency of the Security Council did not intend to take up the subject of the letter from the Iraqi Foreign Minister.]

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