ACTIVITIES OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL IN FRANCE, 24-26 NOVEMBER
The Secretary-General arrived in Paris from the Netherlands on the evening of 24 November, meeting next day with French President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. In talks lasting over an hour, they touched on the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, the situation in the Middle East,
a number of African issues from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Burundi and, in considerable detail, Côte d’Ivoire. The Secretary-General briefed the President on his talks in Geneva with the Presidents of Nigeria and Cameroon concerning the World Court decision in their border dispute. They also discussed the situation in Colombia.
The President then hosted a luncheon in the Secretary-General’s honour, during which their talks continued. They started with Cyprus, then went on to Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Franco-African Summit scheduled for early June, the Secretary-General’s Global Compact with private industry and labour, and the situation in Georgia.
The President and the Secretary-General then briefly met the press. Responding to the President’s mention of the return of UN inspectors to Iraq, the Secretary-General said that Iraq must cooperate fully with those inspectors “without reservations” and added, “it is the only way to avoid a military conflict in the region”.
Asked about the Iraqi Foreign Minister’s latest letter, the Secretary-General said it evoked some legal issues concerning resolution 1441, but “obviously, it is up to the Security Council members to decide”.
In the afternoon, he met with the Defence Minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie. Their talks at first focused on France’s contribution to United Nations peacekeeping. They then reviewed the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Secretary-General’s recent visit to the Balkans.
In the evening, the Secretary-General met with Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. They reviewed recent Security Council activity on Iraq and discussed the steps ahead. They also talked in more general terms about current trends in global issues.
The Secretary-General then attended a conference on the future of multilateralism at the University of Paris’s Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales de Sciences Politiques. After brief opening remarks, he took questions from students and professors for a full hour.
On the morning of 26 November, the Secretary-General had a series of private meetings before going to the Headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). There, he met with UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura. They discussed the decision by the United States this year to return to UNESCO, after an eighteen-year absence, and the impact that will have on the Organization.
Mr. Matsuura brought up the planning for the 2005 Universal Exhibition in Japan where the United Nations will have a pavilion. Their talks also touched on the launch of the United Nations Literary Decade next February, preparations for the next meeting of the UN’s Chief Executives Board in Paris next March and French President Jacques Chirac’s proposal for a Convention on Cultural Diversity.
They also talked about bioethics and the need for greater inter-agency cooperation within the UN system to deal with ethically complex issues such as cloning and the handling of genetic data. Mr. Matsuura said he would convene a meeting of UN agency representatives to discuss the issue.
The Secretary-General raised the matter of the preservation of monasteries in Kosovo, where he had recently paid a visit. Religious sites in Kosovo are threatened by inter-communal violence and neglect. Mr. Matsuura said that UNESCO was already focussing on that issue.
The Secretary-General left Paris in the early afternoon.