DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY THE OFFICE OF THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
| Press Briefing |
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, and Richard Sydenham, Spokesman for the President of the General Assembly.
Briefing by the Spokesman for the Secretary-GeneralGood afternoon
**Noon Guest
The Office of Internal Oversight Services has released its eighth annual report, in which it issued more than 2,300 recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the United Nations -– with over half of those recommendations already having been implemented by management.
Here to talk to you about the report is the Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services, Dileep Nair. And we’ll get to him in just a minute.
**Security Council
The Security Council, under the Chinese presidency, just finished consultations on its programme of work for the month of November. Sitting in as an observer was Germany, which is scheduled to assume the Security Council presidency in February as one of the five new non-permanent members for the year 2003.
At 1 p.m., the Deputy Permanent Representative of China, Ambassador Zhang Yishan, is scheduled to brief you on the programme of work.
And at 3:30 p.m., the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee is scheduled to meet.
**Niassé/Democratic Republic of Congo
Regarding the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), during a press conference in Pretoria on Saturday, Moustapha Niassé, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, said the Congolese parties and components to the inter-Congolese dialogue, who had all been consulted during this round of talks in Pretoria, had agreed on the broad principles to underpin the transition period.
They will now work on preparing written submissions detailing their positions on power-sharing based on agreed-upon principles. Those submissions would be handed over to the joint UN/South African mediation team which would synthesize them into a working paper in time for the next round of negotiations, which is scheduled to begin on 15November in Pretoria.
Mr. Niassé was hopeful that, should no new difficulties arise, it would be possible to complete that round of talks by the 21st of the month. The inter-
Congolese dialogue could then be reconvened under its Facilitator, Sir Ketumile Masire, to formally adopt and endorse the power-sharing agreement. Mr. Niassé said that he hoped the transitional institutions could be established in the DRC sometime in January next year. The transition period would last between 24 and
30 months, leading to free, transparent and democratic elections in the DRC. “All the parties”, he said, “must understand that the war, which has gone on for four years now, must end.”
**Côte d’Ivoire
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that the situation in Côte d’Ivoire remains fragile and tense.
In Abidjan, shantytowns continue to be demolished and their populations displaced. The situation could deteriorate into a large-scale humanitarian crisis, resulting in massive displacement of people in the country and a possible outflow of migrant workers into neighbouring countries. Côte d’Ivoire is host to some 4 million migrant workers.
We have a press release with more details.
**Afghanistan
The UN Mission in Afghanistan over the weekend provided information about its winterization plan for this year, in which it intends to deal with the needs of some 1.7 million Afghans who are in need of food this winter, and also intends to provide non-food items, from blankets to tents to coal. The total financial requirement for the Mission’s winter plan is $12.5 million.
I also wanted to highlight a step forward in the efforts by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), to reconstruct Afghan schools, with the rebuilding of a girls’ high school in the province of Badghis. Some 800 students have joined that school already, and the demand for education in Badghis was so great that students began to come into the building while construction was only 80 per cent complete.
We have more in today’s briefing notes from Kabul.
**Secretary-General’s Meeting with Heads of Principal Organs
We reported a meeting on Friday of the heads of the six principal organs of the United Nations -– the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice and the Secretariat.
A statement was issued late Friday evening, which said that the five presidents and the Secretary-General had an informal exchange of views on current international trends from the perspectives of their respective principal organs, including the ongoing reform process of the Organization, which began in 1997.
The Secretary-General further briefed the meeting on developments in Africa, the Middle East and Iraq, while the Deputy Secretary-General discussed progress achieved in the area of HIV/AIDS.
**Drugs
The International Narcotics Control Board began a two-week session in Vienna today, which will focus, among other things, on the impact of illicit drugs on economic development. The President of the Board, Philip Emato, noted that only
1 per cent of the money spent on illicit drugs is generated as income by farmers in developing countries, while the remaining 99 per cent is earned by drug-trafficking groups.
We have more information on the current Board session in a press release.
**FAO
A revised “International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides” should significantly reduce the threats posed by agrochemicals in developing countries, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a press release issued today.
The Code is the globally accepted standard for pesticide management, the FAO said. "If all parties concerned applied the Code, many lives would be saved, environmental damage would be avoided and agricultural production would become more sustainable", according to a senior FAO official.
A press release with more information is available upstairs.
**Least Developed Countries
This morning, the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States -– headed by High Representative Anwarul Karim Chowdhury -- officially launched a Web site containing information about the work the office does. This is the first comprehensive Web site to deal with the problems facing those three vulnerable groups of countries.
And if you want to see the site, its address is www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls. If you didn’t get that, come on to my office afterwards.
**Budget
Two more nations completed their full payment to the UN regular budget today, Burkina Faso with a payment of $22,000 and Lebanon with a payment of $133,000. One hundred and thirteen Member States have now paid their 2002 dues in full.
**Lecture
This Wednesday, from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m. in the Economic and Social Council Chamber, the Secretary-General will host the second in a series of lectures dealing with issues of the day that are outside the normal range of UN topics –- with the lecture, this time, concerning “Genetically Modified Crops for Developing Countries”.
The lecturers for Wednesday’s session will be Professors Jennifer Thomson of the University of Cape Town in South Africa and Daphne Preuss of the University of Chicago.
**Sports
Before turning to the weather, I have some sports results for you.
Twenty-one runners from the UN Athletic Committee participated in yesterday’s New York Marathon. And the best UN time was clocked by Kevin Shelton-Smith of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations’ Air Transport unit. Kevin finished the race at 2:48 hours -– his best time ever for a NY Marathon. With that time, Kevin was the 195th runner to cross the finish line out of more that 31,000 athletes.
We congratulate him and the other 20 UN runners who finished the race.
**World Chronicle Programme
World Chronicle Programme number 871 would be aired today. It features
Dr. Ebrahim Malick Samba, Director of the Regional Office of the World Health Organization. You can see it at 3:30 p.m. today on in-house television on channels 3 and 31.
**Press Conferences
Press conference this afternoon, immediately after this briefing -- Shashi Tharoor, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, will brief you on the 50th anniversary of the United Nations guided tour, and I think we have a press kit in the corner there. And, of course, about one clock, sometime after that we have the Deputy Permanent Representative of China. And then a press conference tomorrow at 11 a.m., Hina Jilani, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders, would be here to brief you on her work.
That is all I have for you. Any questions before we go to Richard and then to Mr. Nair?
**Questions and Answers
Question: There is a report in Newsweek this week about the “oil-for-food” programme, and I was just wondering if there are any reactions to that or comments about that.
Answer: I haven’t seen it; I’ll have to look for it and then we’ll have to ask the Iraq Programme if they have any reaction. If you check with my office in the course of the afternoon, we’ll get back to you.
Question: Do you have any new information about the new draft resolution on Iraq, is there any chance the US will introduce a new draft tomorrow?
Answer: I think you probably should have caught the Ambassadors as they came out of the consultations this morning. But I wouldn’t speak for them; they will have to speak for themselves.
Question: What do you have about Mr. de Soto’s meetings in New York?
Answer: He was here over the weekend, he is still here now. He did meet with the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr. Denktash. But that meeting was described as a social and private visit. And he is scheduled to meet the Secretary-General tomorrow.
Question: What is this story of the meeting of the six organs of the United Nations? We never had this thing before.
Answer: It is an innovation of Kofi Annan; about four years ago it started. I think he felt it would help the integration of the system as a whole if all heads of the permanent organs met once a year to just compare notes. He is also the first Secretary-General to gather together all his under-secretaries and heads of funds and programmes into a kind of cabinet which meets once a week.
Okay, if there is nothing else for me, we go to Richard and then to
Mr. Nair.
Briefing by the Spokesman for the General Assembly President
Good afternoon.
The General Assembly plenary this morning took a decision on elections to ... appointments to the Committee for Programme and Coordination. There were
19 States nominated by the Economic and Social Council, and they are elected for a three-year term of office.
Following that, the plenary took up the agenda item Culture of Peace and adopted draft resolution A/57/L.9/Rev.1, entitled International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World 2001-2010.
The plenary then adopted the draft resolution on the final review and appraisal of the implementation of the UN New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s (UN-NADAF) and support for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
Following that, the plenary took up the agenda item on the 2001-2010 Decade to Roll Back Malaria in Developing Countries, Particularly in Africa, with four speakers. The plenary then took up the role of the UN in promoting a new global human order, the report of the Secretary-General and draft resolution A/57/L.10 to be introduced by Guyana. After that the General Assembly will consider information and communication technologies for development in a summary by the President of the General Assembly at its 56th session -- that’s in A/57/280.
This afternoon, Assembly President Kavan will chair open-ended informal consultations on the strengthening of the United Nations. The Special Political and Decolonization Committee holds a general debate on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The Second Committee discusses implementation of the outcome of the UN Conference on Human Settlements. The Third Committee has a dialogue with the High Commissioner for Human Rights and consider human rights questions. And the Fifth Committee
discusses programme planning, programme budget 2002-2003 and the financing of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH).
And tomorrow there will be open-ended informals continuing on the strengthening of the United Nations.
Any questions? Thank you.
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