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.

Thank you for waiting.  Good Afternoon.

We’re going to start with two statements on the Middle East.  The first on the Road Map.

**Statement Attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General

“The Secretary-General welcomes the statement by President Bush this morning that the Road Map of the Quartet will be presented to the Israelis and Palestinians once the Palestinian Prime Minister has been confirmed in office.  Since December 2002, the Secretary-General has been pressing for the Road Map to be adopted and presented to the parties as soon as possible.

“The Secretary-General urges that, once the Road Map has been presented, its implementation by the parties will be pursued with persistence and determination”.

**Statement Attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General

The second involves events in the Middle East today: 

“The Secretary-General is gravely concerned at the rising and alarming toll of casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  In the past 24 hours alone, 11 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids in the northern
West Bank.  In addition, three Israelis have been seriously wounded, two in Jerusalem and one near Hebron.  The Secretary-General urges the parties immediately to cease all forms of violence, to seize the opportunity to pursue the path to peace through political negotiations, and to act in strict compliance with their obligations towards civilians under international humanitarian law.”

**Security Council

The Security Council is meeting this morning in closed consultations on Côte d'Ivoire.  Members are being briefed for the first time by the
Secretary-General's Special Representative for Côte d’Ivoire, Albert Tevoedjre.

Mr. Tevoedjre has agreed to join us here at the briefing if the consultations finish in time.

The Security Council has scheduled a formal meeting to adopt a resolution extending the mandate of the United Nations mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

And there are no closed consultations of the Security Council on Iraq scheduled for today.  Informal discussions among Council members are ongoing.

**Cambodia

In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, today, the United Nations team led by Legal Counsel Hans Corell held intensive discussions with the Cambodian side.  At an initial meeting, they worked through the text of a draft agreement between the Government and the United Nations concerning the trial of the Khmer Rough leaders.

The two delegations then broke for consultations before resuming in the evening.  They covered all the articles of the draft agreement and reached understanding on quite a few of them.  And the talks will continue through the weekend.

**UNMOVIC

Our daily report from the weapons inspectors in Baghdad tells us that teams from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) continued to supervise the destruction of Al Samoud 2 missiles and its components.  Four more Al Samouds were destroyed, along with seven warheads and some propellant tank cylinder parts, at the Taji Technical Battalion.

Today’s action brings the total number of Al Samoud 2 missiles destroyed to 65 along with 42 warheads. 

Other teams from UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continued their activities, both in Mosul and the Baghdad region.

For a full update, please pick up the briefing notes in my office.

**Sierra Leone Special Court

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has announced in Freetown today that former rebel leader Foday Sankoh and three others indicted by the Special Court for their role in the 10-year civil war will make their first appearance on Saturday. 

Five out of seven, indicted by the Special Court, are in the custody of the Court.  Indicted with outstanding warrants for their arrests are
Johny Paul Koroma, former head of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council and a former associate, Sam Bokarie, who is in Liberia.

**Democratic Republic of the Congo Panel

The Expert Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has gathered at United Nations Headquarters, in preparation for formally beginning its work under its new six-month mandate.

The Panel is expected to arrive in Nairobi on 24 March, to begin holding a series of meetings with those identified in the Experts’ most recent report as participating in illicit or criminal exploitation of raw materials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ambassador Mahmoud Kassem, Chairman of the Expert Panel called the new mandate a challenging one:  “In carrying it out, the Panel hopes to contribute concretely to advancing the peace process in the DRC”, he said.

The Expert Panel will present a briefing to the Security Council after three months of fieldwork and submit a report at the end of its mission to the Secretary-General. 

We have a press release with details in my office.

**Human Rights

The United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights
Bertrand Ramcharan has been making a tour of Central Asia, as you know from our previous reports.  He visited Uzbekistan from 11 to 13 March.

In meetings with government officials, he called for the tangible implementation in practice of the commitment to human rights.  He noted that many problems prevailed and urged corrective measures.

The Deputy High Commissioner noted that, in several instances, interim measures of protection ordered by human rights treaty bodies had not been respected and that persons had even been executed notwithstanding such orders.  He urged respect for such interim measures.

Mr. Ramcharan is now in Turkmenistan, on the last leg of this trip.  He visited Azerbaijan on 13 March, where he discussed, among other issues, the publication in the Azeri language of the United Nations manual on the independence of judges and lawyers.

We have a press release with more details.

**Drugs

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Colombian Government will issue Colombia's 2002 Survey of Coca Crop next Monday.

The report, which will be launched in simultaneous press conferences in Brussels and Bogotá, will contain information about the extent of the cultivation and the volume of cocaine production, with detailed data covering underlying trends and causes of shifts.

Colombia produces nearly 80 per cent of the world's cocaine.

**Chad

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that the number of Central African refugees and Chadian returnees arriving in southern Chad over the past week totaled more than 4,000, bringing to some 30,000 the overall number of arrivals since mid-February.

The UNHCR expressed concern about very worrying reports of harassment of refugees, particularly of refugee women, by Chadian soldiers.  They are alleged to have repeatedly tried to abduct refugee women from a refugee transit centre in the town of Gore.

For more information, you can pick up the UNHCR briefing notes.

**Press Releases

One press release to highlight for you today from the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme for HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS.  An expert group has reaffirmed that the vast majority of HIV infections in
sub-Saharan Africa can be attributed to unsafe sexual practices.  The group says that the promotion of safe sex practices must remain the primary feature of prevention programmes in the region.  The group said that recent suggestions that unsafe medical practices, particularly unsafe injections, were responsible for the majority of new infections were not supported by the evidence available.

**Globalization Lecture

      A reminder of what we announced to you yesterday that the
Secretary-General’s lecture series continues today on the subject of globalization.  You can see it at 1:30 p.m., in the Economic and Social Council chamber, I believe it is.

The Secretary-General will introduce the speakers and will draw attention to make globalization work for all the world’s people.  If you don’t want to go down to ECOSOC, you can watch it live on in-house television.  You can pick it up on channels 16 or 67. 

We also have embargoed copies of the Secretary-General’s introductory remarks available in my office.

**Budget

Finally, Budget news:  One payment today.  The Republic of Korea made payment of more than $9 million to the peacekeeping budget.

**The Week ahead at the United Nations

And we have the Week Ahead for you to help you plan your week next week, which I suspect will be somewhat unpredictable.  Yes?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  With regard to this summit in the Azores on Sunday between President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain:  is the Secretary-General planning to go there to attend?  Or is this totally separate?  How does he look at this?

Spokesman:  No.  He’s not been invited.  Like you, he found out about it from the news media.  And he’ll of course be watching developments there but not participating personally.  All right.  Yes?

Question:  Is it his view or does he fear the perception that having this summit meeting undermines or reduces the influence of the UN’s at the
Security Council’s deliberations on Iraq?

Spokesman:  No.  I think he would say any effort to find a solution, a peaceful solution, would be welcome.  Whether it’s at the summit level in the Azores or the working level here in the Security Council.  Serge?

Question:  On the trial of Sankoh in Sierra Leone:  will the UN have any participation in there?

Spokesman:  This is a Special Court.  I think if you want to look up the terms of reference of the Special Court, I can’t answer your question directly because frankly, I don’t know at this point what role, if any, the United Nations has in that court.  So, let me do some homework and answer your question after the briefing.  Yes, Pat?

[He later said that the United Nations continues to cooperate with the court, providing technical and logistical assistance.]

Question:  Last night, at a US foreign policy panel I happened to go to, this question of resolution 335, “Uniting for Peace” came up again -- the same one that Green Peace is trying to use to activate the General Assembly.  If I understand it correctly, when the Security Council is hamstrung on a decision under this resolution, this very old resolution, it can go back to the
General Assembly for a resolution, which would probably put a very different face to the Iraqi question if this should happen.  Is there any possibility of that happening?  How does an NGO like Green Peace get something like that started with the General Assembly?

Spokesman:  I don’t think Green Peace would get it started.  But I think you probably know that the Non-Aligned Movement here has been talking about a “Uniting for Peace” resolution.  They’re watching how things progress in the Security Council.  So, I suggest that you talk to the leadership of the
Non-Aligned Movement, which is Malaysia.  Yes?

Question:  There is quite a lot of talk going on about what the future for the Oil for Food programme might be in the case of conflict.  What the relationship or the UN agencies and the UN Secretariat would be with the occupying power in terms of the distribution of humanitarian goods.  Meetings have been going on quite a lot over recent days.  I understand there’s another one today.  I was wondering if you could, let’s say given the lateness of the hour, give a little more sense of what the UN’s thinking is on its relationship to the military power in Iraq in case of war in terms of putting out humanitarian aid and what the future of the Oil for Food program could be?

Spokesman:  I am not going to speculate.  Oil for Food is one of several Security Council-mandated programmes that currently exist.  Should there be military action, one of the first questions to be asked is “What should the status of those programmes be?” and that is a Security Council judgment call to make.  The Oil for Food programme, as you know, is a large, elaborate and effective distribution network for aid to Iraqis.  And if you wanted to replicate it, it would probably take a long time.  So, we in our contingency

planning have been looking at ways to keep the Oil for Food programme going.  But whether the Security Council agrees to that or not, we’ll have to see.

Question:  In terms of the relationship between UN agencies and the occupying power in its contingency planning:  have you, has that been determined; established how that would work?  Who would have primacy in decision-making on distribution for humanitarian goods?

Spokesman:  That would have to be worked out.  These Security Council-mandated programmes that I’ve –- well, I mentioned just one; Oil for Food; but you have the Compensation Commission, UNIKOM, the peacekeeping force on the border; and a number of others.  They’re in one category.  UN agencies, funds and programmes with an on-going mandate to assist victims of war or catastrophe, I have to assume are also free to act as soon as the security environment would permit.  So, we would –- I don’t want to get into too much speculation about what might happen if there were a war when everyone here is still scrambling trying to find a peaceful solution -- but we would be prepared, all those agencies I assume are prepared, to act and we have been working for a long time in our contingency planning to coordinate their response should they be called on to do so.  When you have a military situation of course, the military would have to determine when they’re going to allow the international community in to carry out aid.  But our assumption is that we would be called on and we’ve done contingency planning to respond in a coordinated way. 

Question:  Fred?

Spokesman:  Yes?

Question:  Here we’re talking about the war in the house of peace.  Since the Secretary-General didn’t make a move to go to Baghdad like U Thant did in 1963, go to Cuba.  We all went to Cuba in 1963 to review the situation.

Spokesman:  Well, first of all it’s a house of peace.  But the Charter allows for the use of military force when approved by the Security Council to maintain international peace and security.  So, there is some punch in the Charter as well.  You’ve asked me before about the Secretary-General going to Baghdad and I have answered that one.  I am afraid he has no plans to go.  He sees no useful role for himself to play in Baghdad.

Thank you very much.

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