DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY THE OFFICE OF THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL AND THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY THE OFFICE OF THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL AND THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT

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 General Assembly President.

Spokesman for Secretary-General

Good Afternoon.

**SG on Iraq

On entering the building this morning, the Secretary-General was asked by reporters about the recent developments in Iraq and he said, “It appears there is no functioning government in Iraq at the moment”.

He noted the scenes of jubilation, but also drew attention to the casualty toll, both civilian and military, saying that “the Iraqis have paid a terrible price for this”.  The Security Council, he said, has reaffirmed that the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions apply to the present conflict and that the coalition has a responsibility for the welfare of the people in the area it controls.

Asked about the future of UN weapons inspections in Iraq, he said that the mandate given to the chief UN inspectors Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei was still valid, although it had become inoperable because of the war.  And he added that, “when the situation permits, they should go back to resume their work”.

As for the lifting of sanctions on Iraq, the Secretary-General said that the Security Council has not really discussed this matter.  The question of how the United Nations deals with an entity in Iraq, he added, is one of the things that “we need to sort out in the next few days”.

We have the full transcript of his comments upstairs.

**Oshima -- Iraq

We also have available upstairs a statement from the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Kenzo Oshima, in which he expresses his sorrow at the recent death in Baghdad of an International Committee for the Red Cross delegate, Vatche Arslanian.

Oshima is also concerned about the fate of two humanitarian workers from Medecins Sans Frontieres, who have been missing in Iraq since 2 April.

**Iraq -- Humanitarian

During today’s briefing in Amman, Jordan, a spokesman for the World Food Programme (WFP) said WFP is planning, security permitting, to send international staff back into Iraq –- both the north and the south -- within the next few days.  They will assist in the assessment of the needs of internally displaced persons; check on property, such as offices, equipment and warehouses, milling and silo capacity, as well as general preparations for receiving and distributing large-scale food shipments.

Also from Amman, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organization reported that the situation in hospitals in Baghdad continues to be critical with hospital workers being severely curtailed in their ability to do their work due to the lack of civil order in the city.  More generally, UNICEF is seeing an unfolding picture of too much desperation, too many guns, and families living in fear and uncertainty.

UNICEF teams reaching Um Qasar are also painting a seriously worrying picture.  In the past few days, UNICEF has had water and health specialists there.  The most alarming information they reported is the dramatic increase in diarrheal diseases during the past five days.  Doctors at the local hospital reported the staggering increase of childhood diarrhea is directly related to the water situation in Southern Iraq.

UNICEF is setting up a water bladder of 10-thousand litres for the hospital in Um Qasar today.

The widespread looting and chaos spread to UNICEF's offices in Baghdad yesterday with phones, chairs and essentially everything being taken away.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) added that the current security vacuum and uncertainty is prompting some people to flee.  It is vital that anyone who feels unsafe be able to reach neighbouring countries, UNHCR said.

UNHCR today dispatched a team to look into reports by Iranian authorities that some 1,500 Iraqis who fled Baghdad on Wednesday had reached an area close to Iran. 

The full text of the Amman briefing is available upstairs.

**Iraq -- UNESCO

On a related note, the Director General of the UN Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Koishiro Maatsura, announced in Paris that there will be a meeting at UNESCO Headquarters on 17 April of top international specialists in Iraqi cultural heritage to draw up a preliminary inventory of Iraqi heritage to prepare a plan for its rehabilitation.

**Security Council

The Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, this morning briefed the Security Council in an open meeting.

In his presentation, Mr. de Soto said the Cyprus problem is the oldest item continually on the Secretary-General’s peace-making agenda and that “it is difficult to see a set of circumstances for achieving a settlement as propitious as that which prevailed in the last three and a half years”.

“The fact that a solution has not been achieved in these circumstances”, he said, “is therefore deeply disappointing.  It seems attributable to failings of political will rather than to the absence of favourable circumstances”.

The immediate losers, he told Council members, are not only the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey, but also Greek Cypriots and Greece. "This is truly a lose-lose outcome," he said.

We have the full text of his briefing notes available upstairs.

Council members then moved into closed consultations on the Cyprus peace process.

At 3 p.m., the Security Council Committee on Al-Qaeda sanctions is meeting in Conference Room 7.

**Security Council -- Arria

Yesterday afternoon, the Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram organized a so-called “Arria formula” meeting of Security Council members on the humanitarian situation in Iraq.  Private relief groups were invited to the informal gathering by Pakistan.  The format is named after former Venezuelan ambassador Diego Arria, a Council member from 1992 to 1993 who initiated the practice.

At 3 p.m. this afternoon, the Permanent missions of Mexico and Pakistan will be sponsoring a press conference in this room by CARE International and other non-governmental organizations that participated in yesterday’s meeting.

**Afghanistan

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, conveyed his condolences to the families of the Afghans killed by an air attack of coalition forces on 9 April in the Province of Paktika.  He also expressed his sympathy to those injured and those who lost their property.

The UN Mission in Afghanistan said that the US and other members of the Coalition realize the negative effect these incidents have on them, on the international community as a whole and, most importantly, on the peace process in Afghanistan.

Brahimi discussed this incident with President Hamid Karzai last night.  He will be raising the matter with Coalition authorities as well.

**Timor-Leste

The following statement is attributable to a Spokesman on the subject of indictments in East Timor.

“In Timor–Leste today, an indictment for crimes against humanity was filed against five Indonesian soldiers, charging them with rape and torture.  This was the second indictment this week.  Earlier in the week, 16 others, including eight Indonesia Military District Commanders, were indicted for crimes against humanity, committed in the year 1999.

“The United Nations attaches the highest importance to the successful completion of the investigation and prosecution of serious crime cases, as mandated by the Security Council.  The indictments are prepared by international staff who report functionally to the Prosecutor-General of Timor-Leste, and are issued under the legal authority of the Timorese Government.”

**Liberia – Humanitarian

“Caught between a rock and a hard place, some of the tens of thousands of people who fled fighting in western Côte d'Ivoire into Liberia are now beginning to return to Côte d'Ivoire as another conflict rages in their areas of refuge.”

The Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees reported this development after its staff visited the frontier area between Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, which had been out of reach in recent weeks.

Those on the move were a mixture of Ivorian civilians, Liberian refugees who had fled the Ivorian crisis in recent months, and guest workers from Mali and Burkina Faso.

The recent arrivals in Côte d'Ivoire say they decided to return because of a breakdown of law and order and widespread food shortages in Liberia.

But the situation is hardly better in Côte d'Ivoire, where the UN refugee agency reports that some of the Liberian refugees –- including children -– have been exposed to recruitment as fighters by both the rebels and government forces.

**SARS

The World Health Organization expert team in Beijing had said that the Singapore health authorities have increased measures to prevent the transmission of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, in hospitals.  This follows an outbreak at the Singapore General Hospital that was caused by a so-called ‘super-spreader’.

A ‘super-spreader’ is a person who has, for reasons still unknown, infected a large number of people.  Although transmission patterns of SARS are still not fully understood, evidence suggests that such ‘super-spreaders’ may have contributed to the evolution of outbreaks around the world.

Regarding the outbreak in China, WHO has said that their expert team will start working tomorrow with Beijing municipal health authorities to investigate the SARS outbreak there.

We have a press release with more information.

      **Budget

Nigeria today became the 72^nd Member State to pay its regular budget contribution for this year in full with a payment of more than $900,000.

We also had a payment of more than $146 million by the United States to the peacekeeping budget.

**Noon Guest tomorrow  

Our guest at the noon briefing tomorrow will be Nitin Desai, the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, who’ll be here to brief you about the meeting taking place on Monday between the Economic and Social Council and the Bretton Woods institutions, following the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank this weekend in Washington.

**World Chronicle TV programme

And finally, World Chronicle TV programme No. 887, featuring Shalot Abakhar, the outgoing chairperson of CEDAW, will be shown at 3:30 p.m. today on in-house Television channels 3 and 31.

Questions and Answers

Question:   Fred, what can you tell us about the meeting with the Iraqi Ambassador and Kofi Annan at 11:15 a.m.?

Spokesman:  We have nothing to say about that meeting.  It was requested by the ambassador and we feel that anything to be said about what happened in that meeting should be said by the ambassador.

Question:   As a follow up, can you tell me whether the ambassador asked for protection for any of his staff or his family in Baghdad or any types of requests of that nature any time this week?

Spokesman:  We’re not saying anything about what went on in this morning’s meeting and the Secretary-General made a limited comment on that subject when he came into the building this morning and you can double check the transcript.

Question:   Oh no, I know.  He spoke about him asking for his own individual protection.

Spokesman:  I have nothing more to say on this subject, thank you.

Question:   Fred, when UNESCO asks for, or says it has plans for the rehabilitation of the Iraqi cultural heritage, does that mean they were damaged?

Spokesman:  I don’t know that we have any detailed reports of damaged heritage sites.  But as the situation gradually pacifies, I assume there would be the possibility of assessing any such damage.  So, I think the purpose of this meeting, but double-check the UNESCO press release, is to first take an inventory of what sites there are in Iraq from specialists in Iraqi heritage and then I guess the next step would be to move on to some kind of assessment.  Yes?

Question:   Fred, when was the last time that the UN, I mean anybody at the Secretariat, had contact with somebody in Baghdad, in Government?

Spokesman:  I can’t tell you that.  I think that since the hostilities began, communications with Baghdad have been limited.  We have no international staff there.  We’ve had, to my knowledge, but double-check this with the UN agencies, some limited contact with local UN workers in Iraq, and whether that was specifically in Baghdad or not, I can’t tell you.  My impression from things that the Iraqi diplomats here in New York have told us is they themselves have had difficulty communicating with their capital.

Question:   Not even through a second government, I don’t know, Syria?

Spokesman:  From what the Iraqis have said, their communications with Baghdad, to the extent they have had them, have been through neighbouring countries.

Question:   What about the UN?

Spokesman:  We don’t have anyone to communicate with and our relations with the Government have been through Ambassador Aldouri.

Okay, Richard?

Spokesman for General Assembly President

Good afternoon.

At this morning’s meeting of the General Committee of the General Assembly, the Chairman announced that a postponement had been requested of consideration of the Arab Group’s request for inclusion of a new agenda item “The situation in Iraq” in the current 57^th session of the GA and there would therefore not be a meeting of the General Committee tomorrow morning as had been previously announced.

Yesterday afternoon a letter was received by the President of the General Assembly from the Chairman of the Arab Group, requesting this postponement. 

On a different topic, and also at its meeting this morning, the General Committee heard a statement by Oman and agreed to recommend inclusion of an additional agenda item  “Global road safety crisis” in the work of the current session of the GA for consideration directly in plenary meeting.

The General Assembly will consider the report of the General Committee on this action as the first item at the meeting of the plenary tomorrow morning. 

The plenary tomorrow will then hold a discussion on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict.  That’s in draft resolution A/57/L.76 which will be introduced by South Africa.  So far 14 countries are inscribed to speak.

Any questions?

Thank you.