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 Hua Jiang, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good afternoon.

**Secretary-General in Rome

The Secretary-General is in Rome today, where he is to have an audience this evening with Pope John Paul II, and is also to meet with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State for the Holy See.

Earlier today, the Secretary-General had a working lunch with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with discussions focusing on Iraq, and also touching on Afghanistan, North Korea and Côte d’Ivoire.

The two men spoke to the press afterward. The Secretary-General noted Europe’s key role in the Iraq crisis, not just on the political side, but also on the possible humanitarian consequences of the conflict.  He said that, yesterday, in Brussels, he had the opportunity to brief European heads of State and government on UN contingency planning if war arises.

Asked about how much longer UN inspections in Iraq should continue, the Secretary-General said the inspectors will carry on with their work until the Security Council decides otherwise.  He noted that there is no time limit in the Council’s resolutions, but a debate is going on in the Council about how much more time is needed.  We have a transcript of his comments to the press upstairs and, also, it’s on our Web site.

Shortly before the audience with the Pope, during which he is expected once more to talk about Iraq, the Secretary-General met with Italy’s President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

**Secretary-General in Brussels

Yesterday, in Brussels, Belgium, the Secretary-General urged European heads of State and government to stay focused on Iraq and its obligations to disarm, and to “avoid the tendency of turning on each other.”

He told journalists after he addressed the closed summit meeting, “We should approach this issue positively.  What is required at this stage is cooperation, persistence and constant pressure”.  He added that it was imperative for Iraq’s Government to understand the gravity and urgency of the situation, and to “choose compliance over conflict.”

The Secretary-General also discussed the impact of the Iraq crisis on the United Nations, saying that, if the Security Council can resolve it successfully and effectively, “its credibility and influence will be considerably enhanced.” 

However, if action is taken without the Council’s authority, he warned, then “the legitimacy and support for that action will be seriously impaired.”  We

have the transcript of that press conference upstairs.  It is also on our Web site.

The Secretary-General also held several meetings in Brussels after he arrived at mid-day there from New York via Paris.  Among his meetings were one with Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, with whom he discussed Iraq and efforts to conclude an agreement on Cyprus by the end of this month, and a one-on-one meeting with Belgium’s King Albert II.

He also met with Pat Cox, the President of the European Parliament, and eight leaders of European political groups, who emphasized their strong commitment to the multilateral process and the UN’s central role on Iraq.

In the evening, before he flew to Rome, the Secretary-General discussed Iraq further with Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel.  He also met with Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, discussing Iraq and Cyprus, including the effect of the latest Greek-Cypriot elections on the peace process.

**Security Council

The Security Council, at 3 p.m. today, is scheduled to begin an open debate on Iraq, with 60 non-Council members inscribed to speak so far, according to the Security Council Presidency.  Non-Council members will take the floor first. A speakers' list is not expected until shortly before the meeting.  The debate is expected to continue tomorrow.  The debate was requested by the Non-Aligned Movement.

      **Middle East Peace Process

“The suffering of Palestinians and Israelis today –- the deaths and injuries, the economic devastation, the profound insecurity –- can end only through a political solution,” said the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Terje Roed Larsen, in a speech delivered in London to the Meeting of the International Task Force on Palestinian Reform and of Middle East Quartet envoys.  This meeting is part of a number of Middle East Quartet activities taking place in London this week.

      Bringing this conflict to an end is entirely within the power of the parties in London –- the Israelis, the Palestinians and the International Community, Roed Larsen said.  The task of this gathering is to seek ways to break the dilemma that has maintained our intense humanitarian engagement
-- despite the lack of political process.

He said a start would be an agreement on the minimum needs and basic rights of the civilian population, whatever the prevailing security circumstances.  “We must ensure that every teacher and pupil is able to get to school, every patient has access to health care, every worker can reach his or her workplace, and every household has access to safe and affordable water,” Roed Larsen told the participants. 

In closing, he reiterated the fact that only a comprehensive plan like the “road map” can succeed in resolving these dilemmas.  “Regrettably,” Roed Larsen said, “while the road map’s clock is wound, it is not yet ticking.  And while we are confident that will start soon, there is an absolute imperative to improve the lives of ordinary people right now”.  The full text of his remarks are available upstairs.

**Iraq

Health workers in Iraq will begin a five-day immunization programme on Sunday, 23 February.  The campaign aims to vaccinate 4 million Iraqi children against polio, according to the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF.  At the same time, health workers and volunteers will intensify routine measles immunization for children under the age of five years.  UNICEF says that close to half a million children under five have not been vaccinated against measles.  We have a press release with more details.

Over the weekend, yesterday and today, the work of the weapons inspectors continued in Iraq.  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today conducted two interviews in private, each with a scientist previously associated with Iraq’s former gas centrifuge enrichment program.  The Agency also conducted a private interview yesterday with a senior engineer connected with Iraq’s procurement history related to 81mm aluminum tubes.  The first U-2 surveillance flight took place yesterday.

Meanwhile, teams from theUnited Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and IAEA conducted a large number of inspections over the last four days, including visits to electronics, ammunition, chemical and missile sites in and around Baghdad, as well as in the Mosul region.  In terms of manpower, as of today, there are 104 inspectors from UNMOVIC and the IAEA.  Eighty-six of them are from UNMOVIC, and 18 from the IAEA.  With the addition of newly trained inspectors, UNMOVIC has a total roster of roughly 350 inspectors.  We have upstairs the full press releases from Baghdad.

**Cambodia

Last Thursday, February 13, the Secretary-General received a letter from Prime Minister Hun Sen, inviting him to send a United Nations team to Phnom Penh to resume detailed negotiations for an agreement on Khmer Rouge trials.  The Secretary-General wrote back on Friday last week, accepting that invitation and offering to send a team to Phnom Penh either later this week or, alternatively, in the beginning of March.

The Secretary-General is now waiting for a reply from Prime Minister Hun Sen, informing him which of those dates would be most convenient for the Government of Cambodia.  The General Assembly has asked the Secretary-General to report to it by March 18 on the progress of negotiations.

**Behrooz Sadry (Iran) Named Deputy Special Representative for DRC

The Secretary-General has appointed Behrooz Sadry as Deputy Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Mr. Sadry has a distinguished career with the United Nations, and has most recently served as the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Sierra Leone.  He assumed his functions in Kinshasa on the 17th of this month.

**UNHCR/West Africa

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that the western part of Liberia saw renewed fighting over the past week, which has prompted more than 30,000 people to flee their homes and head for the capital, Monrovia.  About 6,000 Liberians have gone into Sierra Leone, with thousands more reportedly on the way.

In Côte d'Ivoire, UNHCR says its offices continue to receive desperate requests from some of the estimated 40,000 Liberian refugees in the area wanting to be evacuated to a safe area or moved to other countries in the region.

**Cyprus

From Cyprus, a lighter note.  Yesterday at 5 p.m. local time was the deadline for the submission of entries for the competition for a new Cyprus flag and anthem.  The UN has so far registered upwards of 1,000 entries, with some more being still being registered.  Submissions from abroad are expected to continue to arrive by mail over the next two days.

According to the UN mission in Cyprus, most contestants submitted multiple entries.  They came from individuals, schools and commercial graphic design firms.  Standards were very high, very professional.  Anthem compositions were submitted as scores, with some accompanied by recordings on tape and CD of renditions by full orchestras.

One flag design was submitted by the Greek Cypriot father and Turkish Cypriot mother of a talented three-year-old.  Entries were sent from Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, of course, and from as far afield as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US.  Others came from the UK, Spain, Belgium and Norway.

**International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Three Kosovar Albanians -– Haradin Bala, Isak Musliu and Agim Murtezi –- were today transferred to the Detention Unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, following their detention in Kosovo by KFOR forces.  A fourth accused, Fatmir Limaj, has escaped arrest, departing Kosovo, Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said.

The four Kosovars were indicted by the Tribunal for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in a Kosovo Liberation Army prison camp in 1998, where Serb and Albanian civilians were imprisoned, and some were tortured or killed.  We have more details of their indictment, which was unsealed today, in a press release upstairs.

**Disarmament

We informed reporters late Friday that the Iraqi Government that day had informed the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that it will not assume the Presidency of that body when it was scheduled to do so, on 17 March.  The Conference on Disarmament rotates its Presidency by alphabetical order, and Iraq was to begin a four-week term as President in mid-March, but it has now passed up that role, so Ireland will instead assume the Presidency on 17 March.

      **Tobacco Convention

The sixth and final meeting of the Inter-Governmental Body for the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control began yesterday in Geneva.  Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Gro Harlem Brundtland, said the Convention was only the first step in a long process, and that, once the main Convention was adopted, the process of creating protocols to address specific issues would begin.

WHO has also released the report “Bollywood:  Victim or Ally?” which examines 400 recent Indian films and reveals that 80 per cent show some sort of tobacco use.  About 900 films a year are produced in the Mumbai-based Indian film industry, which has influence that reaches to countries around the world.  The theme of this year’s World No Tobacco Day, to be observed on 31 May, is “Tobacco Free Films, Tobacco Free Fashion”.

**International Labour Organization

The International Labour Organization (ILO) will hold a meeting on 24 to 28 February in Geneva to consider, for the first time, the future of the world's 100 million workers who depend in some way on the production, manufacture and distribution of tobacco for their livelihood.

The meeting is to discuss what ILO officials called stagnating or declining employment in the global tobacco sector, as well as the uncertain future of millions of non-unionized, informal sector workers, including impoverished women and children.  About 6 million tons of tobacco are produced each year in some 120 countries, with 80 per cent of production coming from the developing world and 70 per cent from six countries:  Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the United States and Zimbabwe.  We have a press release with more details upstairs.

      **Press Releases

We have a couple more press releases to highlight for you today.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that Pakistan has declared itself free of the deadly cattle disease rinderpest.  To be declared free of the disease, a country must have had no outbreak for at least two years, must have stopped vaccination, and a surveillance system must be in place.  Rinderpest is a highly infectious viral disease that can destroy whole populations of cattle and buffalo.

In another press release, the FAO warns that the gap between rich and poor farmers and between technology development and technology transfer is widening.  The FAO said that biotechnology has to be redirected to address the needs of poor countries if the divide is to be narrowed.

**Budget

In budget news, the United Kingdom today made a payment of more than $61 million to the peacekeeping budgets.

**French-Language Web Site

As of today, the French-language version of the spokesman’s Web site is now online.  On it, you’ll be able to find most of the items on the English Web site replicated in French.

**Announcement

      Another announcement:  M. J. Denis Belisle, Executive Head of the
Geneva-based International Trade Centre, will lead a briefing in New York today on how to strengthen export opportunities for the world’s poorest countries.  He will be speaking in Conference Room 3 from 3:30 to 5:30 today, under the auspices of the United Nations Office for the Least Developed Countries.  A press release will be issued by DPI this afternoon.  For more information, please contact Tim Wall at 1-212-963-5851. That’s all I have for you. Any questions?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Is the afternoon debate expected to go into evening?

Deputy Spokesman:  Well, it will stop at sometime today.  I don’t expect it will go into really late evening, because tomorrow will be another day for the debate.

Question:  Bush said today again that the United Nations could be facing irrelevancy in the future if it fails to act in Iraq now.  I think you alluded to it earlier in your description of what the Secretary-General said but, if I could ask again, how serious is the Secretary-General taking this risk to the United Nations, with the divide within the Security Council?  How concerned is he about the divisions between the Security Council?  How important a test is the Iraq debate to the United Nations in the future?

Deputy Spokesman:  Well, I said just now that the Secretary-General said again in Rome and in Brussels that he believes that, when united, the Security Council will be much more effective.  And he also said that he himself is still optimistic about the outcome.  He doesn’t believe, at this stage, that war is inevitable.  He hopes that the Security Council will work together to find a solution, and he hopes that it will be a united solution.

Question:  There was some discussion in the Security Council last week about increasing the size of the inspection force and perhaps even increasing the size of the security force for the inspectors.  Have any steps been taken to do that?

Deputy Spokesman:  I think that suggestion was raised by the French delegation in a non-paper that was distributed in the Council itself.  Whether the Council will take up that, it’s up to the Council to decide.

Question: Is there a limit on the size of the force now?

Deputy Spokesman:  There isn’t.  But as I have said, altogether, we have 350 inspectors available in total.

Question:  But there are only a hundred and…?

Deputy Spokesman:  One hundred and four in the country.

Okay, thank you.  Enjoy the snow while it lasts.

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