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 Hua Jiang, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good Afternoon.

**Iraq –- Humanitarian Assistance

During today’s humanitarian briefing in Amman, Jordan, an official from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said a survey of Baghdad’s health facilities conducted by its national staff shows that the recent events have taken a severe toll on those facilities.  A major concern is the lack of health workers, with one hospital having only 7 per cent of its original staff still at work.  The lack of clean water has resulted in a sharp increase in diarrheal cases.  Power outages have meant that vaccines have to be thrown out.  Some hospitals have also had to bury the dead in surrounding gardens, due to a lack of proper storage facilities.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says that it successfully delivered a truckload of surgical items, medicines for communicable diseases, trauma and other urgent drugs to Baghdad.  The supplies are stored in the Ministry of Health’s main warehouse in Baghdad, and will be distributed to hospitals and health centres around the city.

The first UN food convoy arrived in Baghdad yesterday afternoon.  A trip that should have taken only two days took four due to the lack of security and the need to prepare a secured warehouse in the city, said a World Food Programme (WFP) official.  The convoy had 1,400 tons of food, which is enough for half the population of Baghdad, but only for one day.  In a very short time, the UN will need to send more than six times this quantity every day from Jordan, WFP says.

Meanwhile in the north, the delivery of food continues to increase rapidly.  Since the start of its cross-border operations from Turkey 17 days ago, WFP has increased the shipments by 200 per cent.  The agency now provides nearly 50 per cent of the average monthly food requirement in the north.

For its part, the Office of the UN High Commissioner (UNHCR) for Refugees says its staff working in no-man's-land at al-Karama, between Jordan and Iraq, reports that another 100 persons had reached the border between late yesterday and this morning, bringing the total number of people in the makeshift encampment on Jordan's frontier to more than 1,050.  UNHCR is working with local relief organizations to increase the number of shelters and other basic facilities at the windswept border encampment.  Most of the arrivals are ethnic Kurds from Iran and Palestinians.

For more information, please pick up the Amman briefing notes upstairs.

**Iraq -– Kuwait

Out on the racks is the Secretary-General’s report on the activities of the High Level Coordinator on the issue of the return of all Kuwaiti and third country nationals or their remains, Ambassador Yuli Vorontsov.

In it the Secretary-General writes that the resumption of the meetings of the technical subcommittee of the Tripartite Commission last year had provided some hope for progress.  Those meetings were interrupted by the outbreak of conflict late last month.

**International Criminal Court

The Assembly of the States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) resumed in New York this morning, and the States, in a secret ballot, elected Argentine lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo as the Court’s first prosecutor.  Moreno Ocampo received all 78 valid ballots cast this morning.

Moreno Ocampo was assistant prosecutor in the trials against Argentina’s military junta and led a team which analyzed more than 10,000 human rights abuses in that country, among the many important cases with which he has dealt.  We have copies of his curriculum vitae upstairs.

Mr. Moreno Ocampo will also hold a press conference tomorrow in this room at 1 p.m., along with the President of the Assembly of States Parties, Ambassador Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein of Jordan, and the President of the International Criminal Court, Philippe Kirsch.

This afternoon, the States Parties will also deal with budgetary matters for the Court.

**Secretary-General in Vienna

The Secretary-General left Greece today and traveled to Vienna, Austria, where he will have an official visit, although the official program begins tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning, he will meet with the staff at the UN Office in Vienna, before having a meeting with Austrian President Thomas Klestil.  Then on Wednesday, he will meet with the Foreign Minister, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, and will also visit the Austrian Parliament.

**Security Council

There are no meetings or consultations of the Security Council today.  Tomorrow, the Security Council is scheduled to hold consultations in the morning on the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission for Iraq (UNMOVIC), with a briefing by Executive Chairman Hans Blix.

In the afternoon, the Council has scheduled consultations on the “oil-for-food” program with the Executive Director of the Office of the Iraq Programme, Benon Sevan.

**Kosovo

Last Friday, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Kosovo, Michael Steiner, announced a series of emergency measures to deal with Kosovo’s electricity problems, including the appropriation of 17.3 million euro, taken from last year’s budget surplus, to meet emergency repair needs for Kosovo’s power plants.

In addition, Steiner said he aimed for an electricity load-shedding schedule, in which electricity would be turned on for four hours and then off for two hours -– or possibly on for five hours and off for one, during the spring and summer.

We have more details in the press release.

**SARS

The World Health Organization (WHO) is sending this week a second expert team to China, in Shanghai, to monitor the outbreak there.  The WHO says the recent outbreaks in Canada and Hong Kong have raised important new questions concerning the possibility of transmission from the environmental source and its potential to move into the wider community.

So far, a total of 3,547 cases with 182 deaths have been reported from

25 countries.  These figures do not include the military hospitals in Beijing, as those hospitals are not obliged by Chinese law to report cases to health authorities.  However, a WHO team began visits to Beijing’s military hospitals last week.

More information is available in a press release upstairs.

**United Nations Fund for International Partnership

World Chronicle programme no. 891 with Amir Dossal, Executive Director of the UN Fund for International Partnership, will be shown today at 3:30 p.m. on in-house television channel 3 or 31.

That is all I have for you. Any questions?

Questions and Answers

Question:  The Secretary-General, in answering a question on Cyprus, has said:  “As to your question whether the UN or I will be prepared to get involved…” Through this language, does the Secretary-General distinguish himself from the UN?

Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General:  No, I don’t think that is what he meant.  What he meant to say was that his Good Offices will be available if he sees clear signs from both sides with commitment to make real progress on the issue.  That is what he meant:  his Good Offices will be available.

Question:  From the same transcript, the Secretary-General says that, concerning the Middle East, the two parties should not set conditions.  Does that mean that he wants them to accept the “road map” as it is?

Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General:  The Secretary-General has said many times that he hoped that the road map should be published as soon as possible.  Meanwhile, there have been reports in the media that a certain party would like to make some changes.  He was addressing those reports and wanted to clarify his position regarding the road map.

Question:  His position is then that there should be no change in the road map?

Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General:  That is what he said, yes.

Thank you so much.

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