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 Stephane Dujarric, Associate Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good Afternoon.

**Guest at Noon

The guest at today’s briefing will be Terje Roed Larsen, the UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.  As you know, he updated the Security Council yesterday on the diplomatic, security and humanitarian situation in the Middle East, including the recent presentation of the “Road Map”.  Mr. Larsen will join us shortly.

**Visitors

I would like to extend a welcome today to five Nigerian journalists, all Fellows from Freedom House.  So, welcome to you.  More visitors, I see.  Thank you.

**Security Council

Today at 3:30 p.m., the Security Council is scheduled to hold consultations on a draft resolution on Iraq, which was presented yesterday afternoon by the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain.

For the record, the Security Council yesterday afternoon voted unanimously to approve changes in the statute for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, to allow judges who are leaving the Tribunal to finish work on ongoing cases before they depart.

**Iraq

This morning, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Ramiro Lopes

da Silva, met with representatives of the NGO community in Baghdad as part of the UN’s continued efforts to coordinate activities in the humanitarian field.

Today, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that up to 1,000 Iranians, who had left their long-time refugee settlements in eastern Iraq, because of security problems and incidents of looting in late April, remained encamped in makeshift border sites, waiting for the green light to return home to Iran.  UNHCR has asked Iran to permit those refugees to cross home as soon as possible.

From here, the Office of the Iraq Programme, in its weekly update, tells us that the total value of priority items from the “oil-for-food” programme’s humanitarian pipeline that can be shipped to Iraq by 3 June has reached

$949 million.  Most of these supplies are in the food, electricity, agriculture and health sectors.

The UN agencies and programmes actively involved in the review of the oil-for-food pipeline are currently looking at additional ‘shippable’ contracts worth about $330 million.

The update from the oil-for-food programme is available upstairs.

**DRC

Turning to the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the overall situation in the northeastern part of the DRC remains calm, but tense.  The UN Mission in that country, MONUC, has been conducting patrols in Bunia, in order to reduce tensions and reassure the local population, much of which is in town during the day, and returning to the area around MONUC headquarters at night for safety reasons.

The remains of the two military observers killed last week in Mangbwalu have now been transported back to Kinshasa.  The UN Mission has begun a detailed investigation, in order to establish the facts from among the many conflicting accounts of their deaths.  The UN is also taking very seriously reports of threats made against other UN military observers as well as civilian staff.

Humanitarian officers continued to provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance to the internally displaced people in town and at the airport in Bunia.  UN officials plan tomorrow to undertake a humanitarian assessment mission outside of town, to determine the situation of IDPs in that area.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that nearly 20,000 people have fled to Uganda following the ethnic clashes in the Ituri region.  There are growing fears that more refugees could be on their way to Uganda, trying to tag on to Uganda forces as they make their way out of the country.

**Security Council –- Missions

Concerning the Security Council and its upcoming trip to the Central African region, Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sablière of France will brief you on 4 June at the noon briefing on the upcoming Security Council mission, which he will lead from 7 June to 16 June.  The mission intends to visit South Africa, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda as well as Tanzania.

**Liberia -- Refugees

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported today that more than 10,000 people, primarily Liberians, have crossed from southern Liberia into neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire over the past 72 hours.

According to sketchy reports from NGOs, refugees and UNHCR staff on the border, Harper, which is the main town in Liberia's south-eastern Maryland County, was taken on Monday morning by members of the recently formed Liberian rebel movement, MODEL, Movement for Democracy in Liberia.

UNHCR is appealing to the rebels to protect the civilian population, including the large number of refugees and third country nationals who had previously found refuge in Harper after fleeing Côte d'Ivoire.

**Timor-Leste

From Timor-Leste, Timor-Leste celebrated its first anniversary of independence today.  To mark the occasion, the UN Mission in the country, UNMISET, opened a Photo Exhibition with some 80 photos, slide shows and videos highlighting the partnership between the UN and the Timorese people.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, President Xanana Gusmao said that as UNMISET entered its final year, “to know that the commitment and support of the UN to Timor-Leste will continue well beyond the mandate makes us confident of the future”.

The Timor-Leste Government decided to commemorate the first anniversary in a decentralized manner in all the 13 districts with football matches and cultural activities, assisted by the UN Mission and other UN agencies.  A match was held between President Gusmao and government officials, on the one hand, and UN senior management, on the other -- the Timorese team won 2-0. Good news for them, bad news for us.

**Afghanistan

On Afghanistan, the Office on Drugs and Crime has launched a project, in cooperation with the Afghan Ministry of Justice, to reform Afghanistan’s prison system.

The project, which was launched with the signing of a document on prison reform last Saturday in Kabul, will include the setting up of a special detention centre for women, special attention to the needs of women with young children, and the rehabilitation of prisons and improvement of prison conditions in Kabul.  The two-year project has a total budget of $2 million, funded largely by the Italian Government.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai designated today as the National Day of Unity for Children, which is being marked with the start of a campaign to vaccinate 6 million Afghan children against polio between today and Thursday.

Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), welcomed the declaration of the Day of Unity for Children, adding that children’s rights “must be kept at the top of the agenda today and every day”.  We have a press release from UNICEF with more information on that programme.

**Bellamy in Pakistan

Also on UNICEF, Carol Bellamy, will be in Pakistan from tomorrow for a three-day visit.  She will launch a national initiative on girls’ education tomorrow and on Thursday she will deliver the keynote address at the Ministerial Meeting of the South Asia Education For All Forum.  There are some 43 million children out of school in South Asia and over half of these are girls.

**ICTY

From The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia decided to grant an additional 100 days for prosecutors to complete the presentation of evidence in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

The prosecution had until 16 May –- that is, last Friday –- to present evidence, and had complained that the fixed amount of time to present its case limited the number of witnesses it could call.  The Trial Chamber agreed that it would be in the interest of justice to allow the prosecution time to call further witnesses, but also said there was a need to strike a balance to prevent the prosecution’s case from being excessively long.

We have a press release upstairs with further details on that decision, and also one on the initial appearance before the Tribunal tomorrow of Miroslav Radic, a former Yugoslav Army officer who was transferred to the detention unit at The Hague last Saturday.

**Haiti

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) are requesting urgent support for an emergency program to help Haiti’s poorest communities, in an $84 million appeal that encompasses 21 projects to improve public administration, and provide small loans and curb the spread of small arms and community violence.

Adama Guindo, the UN Resident Coordinator in Haiti, says, “The appeal constitutes an urgent effort by the UN system to focus attention on a silent, chronic and forgotten crisis in Haiti”.  Two-thirds of Haitians live below the poverty line, and only half of adults are literate, and, in a labour force of 4.1 million people, only 110,000 people have regularly paid salaried positions.

We have more information from UNDP upstairs.

**WHO

Lastly, on SARS, the World Health Organization has analyzed information concerning the risks of transmission of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) by air travel.  Out of 35 flights, in which there were suspected SARS cases among the passengers or crew, only four flights have been associated with the possible transmission of SARS to fellow travellers.

The last probable transmission through air travel, according to the WHO, occurred on 23 March during a flight from Bangkok to Beijing, four days before the agency started issuing recommendations for the screening of air passengers departing from SARS-infected areas.

The latest statistics indicate a total of 7,864 probable SARS cases with 643 deaths, reported from 28 countries.

In other news, we have an updated fact sheet on meningitis, a bacterial disease which affects more than 200,000 people annually worldwide.  Most cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa and can be prevented by vaccination.

We have more information upstairs.

**World Chronicle

And lastly, World Chronicle programme no. 991 with Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communications and Information, will be shown today at 3:30 p.m. on in-house channels 3 or 31.

Before we turn to Mr. Larsen, do you have any questions?

Questions and Answers

Question:   Yes.  What is the situation in the Congo?  You have mentioned that the UN force there had been receiving threats.  Are these threats coming from the Hema or Lendu militia?  And also as a follow up, I’d like to know if the same number of UN peacekeepers who are on the ground is the same number of people who were there last week.  What do you know about that?

Associate Deputy Spokesman:  As for the specific threats, they have come from a wide variety of armed Congolese groups.  The number of peacekeepers in Bunia is around 700, which is a small increase from last week.  We have been trying to get more peacekeepers there and, as you know, there has also been an appeal from the Secretary-General, who has been in touch with several countries to put together a more robust force that could go into the country.

Question:  If I may ask a follow up?  Most notably, the French have said that they would be willing to provide, to bolster the UN’s peacekeeping force there if other countries were to join in with them.  What’s the status of that right now?  Is it still status quo or what?

Associate Deputy Spokesman:   Well, I think, you know, the Secretary-General has been in touch with several countries on that issue and we’re making some progress but we would not want to announce anything until a package was sealed.  But I think your question should also be addressed to the French Mission.

Question:   There’s a mission in Iraq which yesterday called for the appointment of a new Special Representative.  What is the status of Mr. Ahmed now?

Associate Deputy Spokesman:   Mr. Ahmed is the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Iraq.  He was appointed a while back and he remains in this function advising the Secretary-General on that issue.

Question:   Even if there is a Special Representative appointed?

Associate Deputy Spokesman:   Once a resolution is passed, I think you’ll see there will be a very quick move to appoint a Special Representative who’ll take up his job and work in Iraq, but we’ll have to wait till the resolution is passed.

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