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.

**World Summit on Sustainable Development

Major progress has been made in the negotiations on the major issues relating to trade and finance questions in the outcome document for the World Summit on Sustainable Development.  About 99 per cent of the text concerning finance has been agreed upon, and about 80 per cent of the section on trade. 

Overall, about 88 per cent of the outcome document is complete, and of the 156 paragraphs that were in dispute at the start of the Summit, 76 are still outstanding.

The Chairman of the talks on trade, finance and globalization, John Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda, reported that the key to the progress so far has been the “good spirit in the room” that allowed delegates to work to 3:00 in the morning.  On the outstanding issues, Ashe said negotiations were continuing on the issue of phasing out subsidies, but there were still disagreements on how to characterize the effects of globalization, as an opportunity as well as a challenge.

In other negotiations, countries agreed to restore depleted fisheries by 2015.  About three quarters of the world’s fisheries are fished to their sustainable limits or beyond.  The Chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, Neroni Slade of Samoa, said the agreement was an acknowledgement of a situation that has existed for years and that the specific target of 2015 is an attempt to reverse the trend.

Today’s plenaries are on water and sanitation and energy, and summaries of the meetings will be available later in the day.

**Secretary-General's Travels

The Secretary-General today left Botswana, following a meeting in the morning with President Festus Mogae.

He talked to the press after that meeting, and, in response to a question on his views about any possible military action against Iraq, said, “The UN is not agitating for military action.”

He then travelled to Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, from where, in the early afternoon, he took a short helicopter tour of the Mohale Dam and then met in Mohale with Prime Minister Pakalitha Bethuel Mosisili.  They discussed the recent elections in Lesotho, as well as the two crises –- of food shortages and AIDS -– that are facing the country.

Speaking about the AIDS crisis, the Secretary-General noted that Lesotho was spending 2 per cent of its national budget to treat victims of the epidemic, and he pledged the United Nations’ help in tackling the crisis.

They also held a ceremony to launch the International Year of Mountains, with the Secretary-General planting an olive tree in the mountainous region while rain poured down on him.

Later in the afternoon, the Secretary-General returned to Maseru, where he met with His Majesty King Letsie III, while Nane Annan, his wife, met with the Queen of Lesotho.

The Secretary-General then addressed a joint session of the nation’s Parliament.  He congratulated the people of Lesotho for the elections held last May, and underscored the importance of education and the empowerment of women. Returning to the AIDS crisis, he noted that 30 per cent of the nation’s population between the ages of 15 and 49 were estimated to be HIV-positive.

Later, after a press encounter, the Secretary-General witnessed the

renaming of a road in the capital, from Maseru Bypass to Kofi Annan Road.  He asked anyone using the road from now on to drive carefully.

This evening, the Secretary-General will attend a banquet in his honour hosted by King Letsie.

Last night, in Gaborone, the Secretary-General attended a dinner held in his honour by President Mogae of Botswana, and he praised the people of that country for their achievements as a stable, multi-party democracy with a consistent track record of high economic growth and improvements in health, water, sanitation and education.  He added, “That only makes the tragedy of HIV/AIDS all the more poignant, since it is snatching away the precious development gains you had made.”

We have a transcript of that speech available upstairs.

**Mine Action in Eritrea

Following a directive from the Government of Eritrea ordering international NGOs, that is, non-governmental organizations, involved in Mine Action activities to cease all activities by the end of this month, a joint letter was sent out on 19 August by the UN Secretariat, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the United Nations Development Programme asking the Government to suspend the deadline and allow for further discussion.

As a follow-up to the letter a delegation met with President Isaias Afeworki in Asmara.

This delegation was headed by UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Simon Nhongo, and by the Chief of the UN Mine Action Service, Martin Barber.

They assured the President of the effectiveness of the NGO operations in mine action.  They also appealed for an extension of the deadline to allow the various parties involved to work out an appropriate transition strategy with his Government.

President Afeworki stated his concern regarding the NGO activities and

reaffirmed his decision to have them cease their operations by the end of the month.

We very much regret that Eritrea insists on its decision to exclude the international NGOs from mine action.  This will, no doubt, result in a significant loss of human and material capacity in this vital area.

**Security Council

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

The next scheduled meeting will be tomorrow when the Council meets in closed consultations to review the situation in Bougainville.  The Department of Political Affairs will provide the briefing on that subject.

The Security Council members also will discuss the issue of diamond exports from Sierra Leone.

**Sierra Leone

Alan Doss, the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in that country, yesterday led an assessment mission to two refugee camps in that country, located near the Liberian border, where there has been an intermittent influx of refugees whenever fighting is on the rise in Liberia.

Doss was told that there were inadequate health facilities for the more than 6,000 residents at one of the camps, at Jimi Gbagbo.

He said he would look into the concerns of the refugees and said efforts will be made to increase the resources available in the camps, especially for health.

We have a press release on that.

**Somalia

The independent expert on human rights in Somalia, Ghanim Alnajjar, has started an 11-day mission to the region, during which he will visit Nairobi and several regions of Somalia, as time and security permit.  Starting today, he will visit Somalia itself, exploring issues from the state of the judicial system and prison conditions to the status of women and the challenges facing internally displaced persons.

Alnajjar said he is convinced that, since his last visit to Somalia a year ago, “there has been an escalation of violence in parts of Somalia and a deterioration in security, which is having an impact on the human rights of thousands of ordinary people.”

We have a press release with more information.

Also, the Secretary-General recently informed the Security Council that he has appointed three people to serve as a panel of experts to acquire information on violations of the UN arms embargo on Somalia and consider practical steps for implementing those sanctions.

The experts he named are Ernst Jan Hogendoorn of the Netherlands, Mohamed Abdoulaye M’Backe of Senegal and Brynjulf Mugaas of Norway.

The letter by the Secretary-General came out on the racks yesterday with those appointments.

**Human Rights

The High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson today welcomed the news that the scheduled execution in the Philippines of Rolando Pagdayawon, who would have been the first death-row inmate to be executed in that country since 1999, has been deferred.

A moratorium was placed on the death penalty in the Philippines in January 2001 but then lifted last October; however, since the moratorium was lifted, there have been no executions.

The High Commissioner calls on the Philippines to continue its moratorium, and eventually to abolish the death penalty.

We have a press release on that matter, as well as another detailing the visit to Mexico, just concluded, by the Secretary-General’s Representative on Internally Displaced Persons, Francis Deng.

Deng said that the current displacement in Mexico is largely concentrated in Chiapas, and noted that the Mexican Government has formed a task force that has visited that state.  Deng urged the Government to expedite the formulation of its policy on internal displacement, and added there is a need to break the current impasse in the peace process in Chiapas.

**MINUGUA Report on Lynchings

The UN Mission in Guatemala, MINUGUA, today released a report on lynching in Guatemala.

The report says recent statistics show that although lynching has increased, the mere presence of the National Civil Police (PNC) prevented many from turning into more violent incidents with casualties.  In addition, a comparative study has shown that the areas with the greatest incidence of lynching are also the poorest areas of the country.

MINUGUA called on the Government of Guatemala to formulate a policy to put a stop to lynching.  The Government’s reaction up to now has been too weak to change a practice which is well-rooted in Guatemalan society, the Mission says.

We have a brochure summarizing the report.  Copies of the full report are available on demand but both are only in Spanish.

**World Health Organization

In Harare, Zimbabwe, today, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland appealed to donors to respond promptly and generously to the humanitarian crisis facing southern Africa.  She spoke at a meeting of the health ministers of 10 southern African countries and WHO senior officials being held to discuss the health sector response to the crisis.

She said food shortages were followed by illness and that the solution is to supply food along with health services.  “The people weakened by hunger can survive by receiving the treatment they need for diseases that otherwise will cost them their lives”, she said.

Brundtland also explained that the evidence available today suggests that genetically modified food is not likely to present human health risk and that such foods may be eaten.  She added that southern African countries should consider accepting genetically modified foods in the current crisis.

In other news, WHO announced today that an information kit on the World Report on Violence and Health is available now on their Web site.  The report will be launched on 3 October.

We have press releases available in my office with more details.

**Signings

We have two sets of treaty ratifications taking place today.

This morning, Nicaragua became the thirtieth country to ratify the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, a protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

This afternoon Switzerland will ratify the 1997 and 1999 Amendments to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

**Sustainable Development

By now, you probably know the acronym WEHAB, standing for the Secretary-General's five priorities for the Joannesburg Summit.  W is for water -- which we did on Monday.  E is for energy, which we did yesterday.  Today is H day -- which is health.

Today we focus on tuberculosis, which kills 2 million people worldwide each year.  Drug resistant strains of the disease have been compounded by HIV/AIDS and the breakdown of health services.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a programme to fight back.  It's called Directly Observable Treatment Shortcourses, or DOTS, and combines five elements -- political commitment, detection services, drug supplies, surveillance and monitoring systems and the use of treatments in which patients are directly observed.

India has the highest incidence of tuberculosis in the world.  About a thousand people die each day of the disease in that country.  Under the DOTS programme, eight out of 10 people participating are fully cured.

Let me tell you about one case.  Baidnath Yadav was diagnosed with tuberculosis seven years ago.  He was given medication, but he would stop taking it each time he felt better.  Then, in May 2000, it began to consume him.  He was afraid he would lose his job in Delhi and have to pull his 14-year-old daughter Anita out of school to care for him and return to his village.

But then he was referred to a clinic where he entered the DOTS programme. Under DOTS, each patient's medication is kept in a separate box with a card to

record the doses administered.  Baidnath took his medication regularly under the close supervision of a health worker.  He was cured in eight months.

India has the fastest expanding DOTS programme in the world.  In 1998, just 8 per cent of the population had acces to DOTS programmes.  Today, that figure has risen to 30 per cent.  Millions of people are being helped on the road to recovery by DOTS, making them not only more healthy but more productive.

And that is our development commercial for today.  Any questions?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Can we get a sentence or two on who the people on the Somali panel are?

Spokesman:  I don't have that with me, but we'll see if there are any bio elements in the letter that the Secretary-General sent, and if not, we'll try to get bios for you.

Question:  On the Guatemala lynchings…  Who is lynching whom?  Is this an official thing?

Spokesman:  As the Mission noted it is a practice deeply rooted in society and is most prevalent in poor areas.  I don't honestly know whether there is a pattern of one group practising it against another, but the UN is saying that it is a practice that ought to be stopped.  And if you read Spanish, please read the report.

Question:  You mentioned 2 million deaths in India...since when?

Spokesman:  No, that was not India, that was worldwide.  That is a current figure, and current figures tend to be a year or two old so I can't tell exactly as of when it was.  A thousand people die each day of tuberculosis in India, and the worldwide death figure is 2 million people each year.

Thank you very much.

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