28 January 2003

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.

Good afternoon.

**Security Council

The Security Council is scheduled to hold consultations at 3 p.m. today on Côte d'Ivoire, with the Secretary-General briefing on the weekend Paris talks and follow-up to them.

Also on the Council agenda are draft resolutions on extending the Liberia sanctions panel of experts and on support for the Kimberley Process on “conflict diamonds”.

Formal meetings to adopt both resolutions are expected afterwards.

**Côte d’Ivoire

On Côte d’Ivoire, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says that the security concerns in Côte d’Ivoire have forced its staff to temporarily suspend its operations in Côte d’Ivoire, including a repatriation movement that has so far sent some 900 Liberians home from the south-west.

In view of recent violent protests in the Ivorian city of Abidjan and the general climate of insecurity, UNHCR has put all its operations in the country on hold as a precautionary measure, instructing its staff to stay at home until further notice.

Meanwhile, Carolyn McAskie, the Secretary-General’s Humanitarian Envoy for the crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, remained in Abidjan today.  She is meeting with UN agencies to discuss ways to strengthen the coordination of humanitarian assistance.

**UNMOVIC IAEA Press Statement on Inspection Activities in Iraq

We have the report from Baghdad today on inspection activity.  UNMOVIC requested one further private interview with an Iraqi individual on Sunday.  The individual concerned showed up with an Iraqi official at Al Hayat Hotel, but a private interview did not take place, as he insisted on having a witness with him.  UNMOVIC requested another private interview yesterday.  It did not take place however, either, as the individual concerned insisted on having a witness with him.  To date, UNMOVIC has requested to interview in private 16 Iraqi individuals, but no private interviews have taken place thus far.  UNMOVIC will further seek private interviews, as allowed in Security Council resolution 1441, the Mission says.

For more details pick up the full report from Baghdad that’s available in my office.

**Oil for Food

According to this week’s update from the “oil-for-food” programme, Iraqi oil revenues for the period 18 to 24 of January were $324 million dollars, based on the export of 11.4 million barrels.  You can get the full report upstairs.

**Cyprus

Today in Ankara, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, is scheduled to meet with Turkish Foreign Ministry’s Under Secretary Ugur Zial.

Tomorrow, de Soto is set to meet with the leader of the ruling party Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

He will return to the island tomorrow in time to hold another meeting between the Turkish Cypriot Leader, Rauf Denktash, and the Greek Cypriot Leader, Glafcos Clerides.

He will also meet with Turkey’s Prime Minister Abdullah Gul this evening in Ankara.

**WHO nominates new Director-General

The Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) today nominated Dr. Jong Wook Lee for the post of Director-General.  Dr. Lee is a citizen of the Republic of Korea, has worked with WHO for 19 years and is the current head of WHO’s tuberculosis programme.

Yesterday, the Board heard presentations from the five candidates on the shortlist on their vision for the future of the Organization.  Voting for the final nominee took place this morning.  The nomination will be presented to the fifty-sixth World Health Assembly in May for approval.

We have a press release and a bio of Dr. Lee available in my office.

**Carol Bellamy in Geneva

Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), briefed the press today in Geneva on the report on countries in crisis.

She said UNICEF is seeking $534 million to meet the needs of children in 33 countries in crisis, including Iraq.  On Iraq, Bellamy said that although it was her hope that there would not be a war, UNICEF, along with the rest of the UN family, has been working on contingency plans to meet the humanitarian needs of the population, about half of whom are children.  She added that even though some of the countries in crisis occupy the headlines, the world should not overlook the children in any of them.

Bellamy also welcomed the nomination of Dr. Jong Wook Lee as the new Director-General of the World Health Organization and saluted the outgoing Gro Harlem Brundtland.

We will have Bellamy’s comments to the press later in the day.

**Food Appeal

The World Food Programme (WFP) today launched an appeal to international donors to provide emergency relief food to southern Mauritania, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Mali and Senegal.

To avert a humanitarian disaster, WFP says it needs US$28 million to quickly purchase food rations to help feed 420,000 people suffering from three consecutive years of severe drought in the African countries on the southern edge of the Sahara desert.

**WFP –- Zimbabwe

Worsening conditions in Zimbabwe have led the UN World Food Programme to step up its food distribution there this month. 

The UN is receiving an increasing number of reports of hunger-related deaths, and of children and adults fainting of hunger.  Economic woes, especially the severe foreign currency shortage, and the ongoing shortages of fuel and fertilizer compound the shortages of food.

We’ll have more information shortly in a press release.

**UNDP/AIDS Fund

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) signed an agreement with the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Buenos Aires yesterday, which will provide 12 million dollars to fight AIDS in Argentina over the next two years.  The funds will help Argentina take preventive measures against AIDS and guarantee the availability of antiretroviral drugs through the country's health care system.

Last week in Honduras, UNDP announced that the Global AIDS fund had allocated 2 million dollars for that country’s anti-AIDS efforts, with the possibility of another $40 million grant for the coming four years.

**UNESCO

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Government of Afghanistan today launched a major project to boost literacy throughout Afghanistan, which suffers one of the world’s lowest literacy rates.  UNESCO estimates that only half of Afghan men over the age of 15 and one in five women in the same age group can read and write.

The project’s main focus will be on building up a nationwide network of literacy teachers, trained in modern non-formal education methods.  It will also train people in the development and production of teaching material and provide the necessary equipment for this.

We have a press release from UNESCO in my office with more details.

**Press Releases

The Pan American Health Organization, which is the arm of the World Health Organization operating in the Americas, announced that the first woman to lead the Organization will be sworn in on Friday.  Dr. Mirta Roses Periago, also the first Argentine to hold the position, was elected by the Pan American Sanitary Conference in September of last year, and she will replace Dr. George Alleyne, whose five-year term ends on Friday.  We have a press release with more information on that.

In another press release, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that an international tree planting campaign will be launched in Kenya tomorrow at the Global Youth Retreat.  Called “Plant for the Planet”, the campaign will begin with the participants of the retreat planting

4,000 seedlings in the Ngong Forest Sanctuary.  This effort is part of a programme to plant one million native and rare indigenous trees to restore forests in Kenya.  The campaign is expected to continue in other countries.

**Budget

Finally, budget news for today, four more countries have paid their 2003 regular budget contributions.

The Bahamas with a payment of more than $162,000; the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s with $120,000; Denmark with over $10 million; and Luxembourg with more than $1 million.

That makes 33 countries paid in full for this year.

Any questions?  Richard?

Questions and Answers

Question:   Does the Secretary-General, do you have a comment on the way the rotation falls that Iraq will be the chairman of the Conference on Disarmament starting in May?

Spokesman:  That’s a purely automatic rotation by alphabetical order.  So, as I understand it they have five or six countries per year.  Six different presidents; each serves a four-week term.  And so, the next round of presidents will be in alphabetical order:  India, Indonesia, Iran, yes Iraq, Ireland and Israel.

Question:      Without taking an opinion on the issue, does that send a signal to the critics of the U.S. who scoff at the UN for some hypocritical decisions even if we know it works on rotation?

Spokesman:  It’s not a hypocritical decision, it’s an orderly method that governments have arrived at for the rotation of the chair.  So, I think you could expect that from time to time a letter would come up that might raise questions in certain quarters but it has no political significance, I would say.

Question:   Is the Secretary-General going to be able to get a read out of the dinner on camera here…?  There’s a man playing with me! (Correspondent was distracted by an assistant removing a microphone from his jacket).  The dinner at the White House -- was it purely about AIDS and social issues?  How much dealt with Iraq?

Spokesman:  It was a private dinner.  The White House said nothing about what was discussed, like they didn’t even announce that it was happening, which is their protocol on the President’s private agenda.  And so, we will not depart from that protocol either by commenting on what might have been said.  Yes?

Question:   Has there been any notification served by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations of plans to reveal more specific data, surveillance or any other kind of information relating to Iraqi weapons?

Spokesman:  Not that I am aware of.  We did see a news report saying something to that effect this morning.  But I’m not aware that there’s been any formal notification of either the Council or the Secretary-General.  I’ll double check on the Council for you after the briefing.  Yes?  [He later confirmed no notification had been given.]

Question:   Gro Brundtland has been prominent on the international scene for a long time.  Is there anything else in the works for her at the UN?

Spokesman:  Not that I am aware of.  I think that having put in her five years of exhausting labour, she felt she needed a rest.  I don’t know that she’s looking for anything else to do now but take a little breather.  But you really should ask WHO.  Richard?

Question:   Does the Secretary-General have a wish list of what he’d like to hear President Bush say in his State of the Union address, either on Iraq or health issues or anything?

Spokesman:  He’ll be listening, I guess, like many other people.  I don’t think he wants to anticipate what might be said.  And I doubt he’d even want to comment afterwards, as it’s largely a national matter.  Yes?

Question:   Has the Secretary-General expressed any specific desire to see additional information or evidence presented by the U.S. to the United Nations with respect to the Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction?

Spokesman:  You’re kind of putting him in the middle of a process where he doesn’t belong.  Any governments with information should give that information to the Security Council.  The Council can share it with Hans Blix who reports directly to them in the event it might facilitate his work in Iraq.  But the Secretary-General is not in the middle.  Yes?

Question:   Bear with me on this one.  Does the Secretary-General feel anything about a new man in the UN spotlight, Hans Blix?  For years Kofi Annan seemed to be emblematic of the United Nations.  Almost a cult of personality that for once we have someone else that the cameras are trained on, is he jealous, pleased, couldn’t care less?

Spokesman:  He doesn’t have a jealous bone in his body.  You, who are always asking to interview him, he says why don’t others talk?  I am not the only one who should talk for this Organization.  He has no resentment at all of

the focus that’s on Hans Blix at the moment.  If anything, if it takes some of the focus off him, I think he’s probably relieved.

Thank you.

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