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

Following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, and Richard Sydenham, Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly.

Briefing by the Spokesman for the Secretary-General

Noon Guest

Good afternoon.  It’s a pleasure to welcome Joseph Chamie, Director of the United Nations Population Division, who will be giving us the latest information on international migration and present the International Migration 2002 Wallchart.

Secretary-General Peacekeeping Seminar

This morning, the Secretary-General and the Deputy Secretary-General attended a seminar sponsored jointly by the Peacekeeping Department and the International Peace Academy.

In his opening remarks at the seminar, which is entitled “Past, Present and Future Challenges in Peacekeeping”, the Secretary-General recalled his experience as Under-Secretary-General for the young Peacekeeping Department when resources were very limited.

He said that the lessons learned proved useful for later operations.  “What is important is that there is a realization all round that the peacekeepers have to be given a mandate which is achievable and commensurate with resources,” he said.  “The days are gone when Member States can pass a resolution and tell us to deploy 15,000 soldiers with no idea of where they are coming from, and leaving us to go around begging governments who are not prepared to take risks,” he added.    

The Secretary-General also shared his personal thoughts with the new staff in peacekeeping.  “I walked into the Peacekeeping Department with the accepted conventional wisdom that a declaration of war was too serious a matter to be left to the generals,” he said.  “After a couple of years in peacekeeping, I walked away with another observation:  that a declaration of war was too serious to be left with the politicians and the diplomats.”

He concluded that when the conditions are right, UN peacekeeping can and does make a tremendous contribution to alleviating the suffering of people in the world.

Security Council:  Women, Peace and Security

The Security Council is continuing its open debate on “women, peace and security”.  There are 19 speakers, including a representative of the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women.

Starting at 3 p.m., the Council has scheduled two back-to-back closed meetings.  The first is a briefing by Judge Gilbert Guillaume, President of the International Court of Justice.  The second closed meeting is with the Presidents

of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, Navanethem Pillay and Claude Jorda respectively, on the work of those courts.

Then, at 5 p.m., the Council is planning to resume consultations on a draft resolution on Iraq.

The Security Council Committee concerning Counter-terrorism has also scheduled a meeting today at 3:30 p.m.

Iraq-Kuwait:  Return of Documents

The current operation of the transfer of the first batch of Kuwaiti documents, which commenced on 19 October at camp Abdaly in the demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait, was completed today.  The United Nations arranged the transfer while representatives of the League of Arab States witnessed the procedure.

Any question on the substantive issues regarding the nature and content of these documents should be referred to either Iraq or Kuwait, because the transfer was organized in such a way that only Iraq or Kuwait had access to the contents of the individual files.  The United Nations never had custody of the documents. Kuwaiti officials are examining the transferred documents now.

Iraq is obligated to return all Kuwaiti property, including the archives, in accordance with Security Council resolution 1284 (1999).  Further information on the return will be included in the forthcoming Secretary-General’s report submitted in accordance with paragraph 14 of resolution 1284, and that update is due in mid-December.

Iraq Programme Oil Update

In its weekly update, the Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP) notes that an important contract for the purchase of two gas turbines for the Dibis power plant in Iraq has been approved by the Office under the new set of procedures of Security Council resolution 1409.  Valued at $80 million, the contract had been placed on hold by the Security Council’s 661 Sanctions Committee in December 2000.

Once installed and commissioned, the gas turbines will produce power for the northern governorates of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, which will be reconnected to the national electricity grid as part of an effort to increase the supply of electricity to all three northern governorates.  The third governorate, Dahuk, is already connected to the national electricity grid. 

As for oil exports, they plunged from the previous week’s record high of 3.03 million barrels per day to 729,000 barrels in the week ending 25 October.  This week’s export netted approximately $123 million.

The full text of the OIP weekly update is available upstairs.

Central African Republic -- Refugees

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today flagged reports that a number of Central African nationals are entering the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Equateur province at Zongo, a town directly across the Ubangui River from Bangui.

The refugees are fleeing a very tense situation in Bangui, where fighting and aerial bombing continued through the weekend.  Until late Monday, the tremors of bombing could be felt by UNHCR staff from Zongo, in northern DRC.  The situation overnight was reported calm.

A joint UNHCR-rebel MLC (Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo) assessment mission is scheduled to travel today to two neighbourhoods where the refugees have congregated.

UNHCR said it had obtained agreement from the rebel MLC authorities that they open a humanitarian corridor for a possible further influx of asylum seekers in Zongo as a result of the current developments in Bangui.

DRC Power-sharing Proposal

On the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I wanted to update you on the ongoing efforts by the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, Mustapha Niasse, who, as you know, has been holding discussions in Pretoria, South Africa.

He told journalists this morning that the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC) said today that it could accept, under certain conditions, a one-plus-four scheme at the head of the DRC Government.  This translates as one President and four Vice-Presidents.

As a result of this development, Mr. Niassé will follow up with representatives of the MLC, the Congolese Rally for Democracy–Goma (RCD-G) and the DRC Government later this week.

In the meantime, starting tomorrow, the Special Envoy will be meeting separately with other Congolese groups in his effort to conclude a power-sharing agreement.  These include the Mai Mai, the RCD National and the RCD Kisangani/Liberation Movement, as well as representatives of civil society and the unarmed political opposition.

Sudanese Refugees in DRC

Also on the DRC, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it remains very concerned about the safety of tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in the northeastern DRC province of Ituri, following recent fighting between various factions.

A local UNHCR partner will be trying to send a team to last week's conflict area around the village of Biringi, where UNHCR has received reports that indicate that some of the 17,000 Sudanese refugees who fled into the bush are now beginning to trickle back into the settlement.

Clashes, which began last week between supporters of the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups, are now apparently spreading to an area where there are some

75,000 Sudanese refugees.

For more information, please pick up the UNHCR briefing notes.

New Polio Campaign in Sudan

A new polio campaign is under way in Sudan and health workers hope to be able to reach children who have never been immunized, under a new agreement on access reached over the weekend, according to the UN’s humanitarian Operation Lifeline Sudan.

A landmark agreement that establishes the procedures for unimpeded humanitarian aid access to hundreds of thousands of war-affected people in Sudan was signed on Saturday by representatives of the Government, the main rebel movement, the SPLM/A, and the United Nations.

The World Food Programme calculates that unhindered humanitarian access will enable it to provide food for an additional 585,000 people in Sudan.  This comes on top of the almost 3 million already targeted.

The initial arrangement will last from 1 November and continue until the end of the year.

The dates reflect the time scale of the Memorandum of Understanding under which substantive peace talks are being held as part of the Machakos process.

Global Mountain Summit

The Secretary-General, in a message delivered today to the Global Mountain Summit that began in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, said that the challenges facing the world’s mountains are as big as the mountains themselves, and the way forward is to break those challenges down into smaller pieces and smaller issues.  We have copies of that message upstairs.

(The message was delivered by Johannes van Ginkel, the Rector of United Nations University.)

Poverty Eradication Awards

Tomorrow evening at 6:30 p.m. in the Delegates' Dining Room, the Secretary-General will join United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Mark Malloch Brown at the sixth annual Poverty Eradication Awards, to honour awardees from Albania, Bangladesh, Benin, Chile and Lebanon for their work in the fight against extreme poverty.

The award ceremony is intended to mark the sobering reality that more than

1 billion people on this planet live on less than a dollar a day.

We have a press release from UNDP with more information.

Other Press Releases

We have some more press releases to bring to your attention today.

A preliminary report on the cost of natural catastrophes has been presented at the 8th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in New Delhi, India.  The report says the final bill for this year’s natural disasters could be more than $70 billion.

In a joint press release, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) urge the international community to fund the purchase of seeds and other agricultural inputs for Southern Africa to avoid a worsening crisis next year.  The latest assessments of the region show that 70 per

cent of households in Zambia and Malawi have no cereal seeds and in Zimbabwe,

94 per cent of farmers are without seeds.

World Food Programme Aid to Chechens

The WFP announced today that it will continue to provide emergency food assistance to vulnerable people in Chechnya and Ingushetia.  The operation will provide about 34,000 metric tons of food assistance to more than 290,000 internally displaced and vulnerable people at an estimated cost of

$16 million for the year 2003.

The WFP has been providing emergency aid to Chechens since January 2000 and to date has distributed 90,000 metric tons worth $43 million.  In September the school-feeding programme was doubled and hot lunches are now provided for

47,000 students in 165 schools in the areas most affected by the conflict.

We have a press release with more information.

ECOSOC Post-conflict Initiative

A new initiative by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to assist countries emerging from conflict is taking shape at an ECOSOC meeting that began today at 11:30 a.m.  The Council has established an Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Guinea Bissau to help forestall further conflicts in that country and to engage international support for development.

A press release will be issued by DPI immediately after the meeting.  For more information, contact Tim Wall at 963-5851.

David Horowitz

I have to relate some sad news, since we learned today of the passing of David Horowitz, who died on Sunday.  David Horowitz was the definition of a long-time UN correspondent, having worked as a reporter at the United Nations since 1947 –- in other words, when the United Nations hit the ground running, he was writing about it, and he kept it up all the way until now.

David was born in 1903 in Malmo, Sweden, and, among his many distinguished career highlights, he was President of the UN Correspondents Association in 1981.

A service to pay respects to him is beginning shortly, at 1 p.m. this afternoon at the Riverside Chapel, which is located on 76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

Briefing by the Spokesman for the General Assembly President

Good afternoon.

President Kavan presided over the General Assembly plenary this morning which took note of the report of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the report of the Secretary-General on the Secretary-General’s Trust Fund to Assist States in the Settlement of Disputes through the ICJ.  The plenary heard a statement by the President of the ICJ, Gilbert Guillaume.

          The First Committee continues its discussion of draft resolutions on all disarmament and international security agenda items.

And the Special Political and Decolonization Committee takes up questions relating to information and hears a statement by the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Shashi Tharoor.

The Third Committee concludes general discussion on elimination of racial discrimination and the right of peoples to self-determination.

The Fifth Committee concludes general discussion of the capital master plan and continues discussion of human resources management issues.

Tomorrow and Thursday, the plenary discusses the report of the Secretary-General on strengthening of the United Nations:  an agenda for further change.

Any questions?  Thank you.

* *** *