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.

**Secretary-General in Vienna

The Secretary-General this morning met in Vienna with Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who described an initiative Austria hopes to take to help Iraqi children traumatized by war.  They discussed the future UN role in Iraq, efforts to form a Palestinian government under Prime Minister
Abu Mazen, the prospects for reviving Cyprus peace talks and the UN’s relations with the city of Vienna, home of the third UN Headquarters.

At a press encounter afterward, the Secretary-General said he expected to see some considerable improvements in streamlining the “oil-for-food” program for Iraq in the coming weeks.

Asked about the dispute over the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq, he said that the Security Council resolution on the books states that the inspectors are to go back, although he added that the Council is free to amend that resolution.

Asked about Syria, he said, “I am encouraged to notice that the Americans themselves have indicated that Syria is cooperating with them and there has been a change of tone, which I welcome.”

We have transcripts of that press encounter upstairs.

The Secretary-General then went to Parliament, where he met first with the President of the National Council, Andreas Khol, and then with leaders of all the political parties.  He briefed them on Security Council deliberations on Iraq, and emphasized that Council unity is essential.

In the afternoon, he went to the Federal Chancellery, where Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel hosted a luncheon in his honour.  After lunch, he and the Chancellor met for half an hour for a discussion of European Union enlargement, Iraq, the Balkans, the Middle East and Cyprus.

The Secretary-General then left Vienna for Geneva, where he is to address the Commission on Human Rights tomorrow.

**Chief Executive Board

After he visits Geneva tomorrow, the Secretary-General will go to Paris, where the spring 2003 session of the UN system’s Chief Executives Board will begin on Friday.

The Board’s session, the first of its two meetings for the year, will address the follow-up to the Millennium Summit, and strategies for sustainable development, and will review the follow-up to the outcome of last year’s World

Summit on Sustainable Development, with a particular focus on energy and water issues.

Following their meeting, the executive heads of the UN system attending the spring meeting will convene a brief retreat on Saturday, and they have also been invited by French President Jacques Chirac for a meeting on Saturday afternoon.  We have a press release upstairs with more details.

**Amman

In news from the UN humanitarian briefing in Amman, for the first time since 18 March, UN international staff have returned to Iraq for more than day trips.  This morning a team of six entered northern Iraq from Turkey.  They are expected to be in Dohuk this evening.  Another group of 28 are expected to travel from Turkey to Erbil tomorrow.  They will concentrate on basic food services, internally displaced persons assistance and mine action; then they will expand rapidly their activities to issues related to health, and education.

Meanwhile, a World Food Programme team visited Nassiriya in southern Iraq earlier this week and found out that food prices have skyrocketed -- by 250 to 700 per cent -— in local markets.

In Baghdad, local World Health Organization staff, along with Iraqi health officials, are rebuilding medical laboratories to analyse blood and other samples.  These laboratories are crucial to the timely identification and consequent control of diseases.  WHO is also working urgently to re-start the activities of Baghdad’s blood bank. 

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says that despite the unsettled situation in Iraq, some 150 Iraqi refugees living in Saudi Arabia's Rafha camp have indicated a willingness to return home as soon as possible.  UNHCR staff are meeting with those refugees and with some of the more than 5,200 other Iraqis in the camp who are watching the situation in their homeland, apparently also hoping to go back when the situation stabilizes.

The agency says it would prefer that any repatriation to Iraq should wait until there is proper security and a stable supply of humanitarian aid.  For more information, please pick up the Amman briefing notes upstairs.

**Security Council - Kosovo

The Security Council this morning began an open meeting on Kosovo, on which it was briefed by Assistant Secretary-General Hédi Annabi on the Secretary-General’s latest report, which highlights the continuing transfer of responsibilities to Kosovo’s Provisional Institutions of Self-Government.

That report, Annabi said, shows that Kosovo has “some way to go in establishing representative and functioning institutions”, particularly since work has been hampered by political struggles.

There has been steadily increasing pressure on the UN Mission in Kosovo from all sides, Annabi added, and the Mission has been balancing the competing, and often conflicting, desires of the leaders and people in Kosovo without giving fodder to extremism.  He noted calls for an end to the UN Mission’s interim administration, and asked for the Security Council’s support in rejecting such calls.  We have copies of his statement upstairs.

**Côte d’Ivoire - Humanitarian

The Secretary-General's Humanitarian Envoy for the crisis in
Côte d'Ivoire, Carolyn McAskie, has begun a mission to the region.  Ms. McAskie is on an eight-day mission to evaluate the current humanitarian situation and launch a new humanitarian appeal for that country.

The United Nations estimates that 750,000 Ivorians have been displaced as a result of fighting between rebels and the Government of Côte d'Ivoire that broke out in September 2002.  Families hosting the displaced are being gradually overwhelmed as fighting has caused Côte d’Ivoire’s economy, once the engine of West Africa, to stagnate.

**SARS

The World Health Organization today extended its travel advisory related to the outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, to Beijing and Shanxi Province in China and to Toronto, Canada.  As a measure of precaution, WHO is now recommending that persons planning to travel to these destinations consider postponing all but essential travel.  This temporary advice is an extension of the travel recommendations previously issued for Guangdong Province and Hong Kong, China.

Starting today, the WHO SARS team will begin daily briefings on SARS events, which will take place at 4:00 p.m. local time in Geneva.  [That would be 10:00 a.m. New York time.]  The speakers will be announced at noon Geneva time on the WHO’s SARS Web site.  We have the link for the webcast of the briefing in a press release.

As of today, a cumulative total of 3,947 probable cases with 229 deaths have been reported to WHO from 25 countries.  More information and a transcript of today’s telephone briefing are available in press releases upstairs.

**FAO/WHO Launch Expert Report on Diet & Nutrition

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) today launched an independent expert report on diet, nutrition and prevention of chronic diseases.  The report will serve as the basis for developing a global strategy to combat the growing burden of chronic diseases.  The Expert Report, which is the result of a two-year-long Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation, contains the best currently available scientific evidence on the subject.  We have a press release with more information.

**MONUC

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced today that it was increasing the number of peacekeepers in the Ituri province, in the north-east of the country.  This deployment is part of a reinforced UN civilian and military presence in an effort to strengthen security in the area.  The

UN Mission hopes this will give an additional boost to the work of the Ituri Pacification Commission.  We have a press release available upstairs.

**Budget

Chad has paid its 2003 regular budget contribution of more than $13,000 to become the seventy-sixth fully paid up Member State.

**World Chronicle Television Programme

World Chronicle programme no. 893 with Stephen Lewis, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for HIV/AIDS in Africa, will be shown today at 3:30 p.m. on in-house television channel 3 or 31.

That’s all I have for you.  Any questions?

Good afternoon.

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