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 Washington

The Secretary-General this morning left New York for Washington, where he is to meet with President George W. Bush a little over an hour from now.

Shortly after arriving in Washington, he met at the State Department with Secretary of State Colin Powell.  Following that meeting, he spoke briefly to reporters and said that he hoped that the discussions in Washington today would be helpful to the Liberian process and said, “in the not too distant future, the President would take a decision which I hope will bring happiness to lots of people in the region”.

He was also asked about a document that had claimed that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Niger, and he noted that the issue had been discussed in the Security Council and that International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed El Baradei had told the Council that the document was fraudulent, after which the Council dropped the matter.

The Secretary-General has just been in a meeting with leaders of the US Senate, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.  We’ll try to have a read-out of that meeting once it is done.

In addition to his meeting with President Bush, the Secretary-General also has appointments today with US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, and with several other members of the Senate and House of Representatives.  He’ll be returning to New York this evening.

**Statement Attributable to the Spokesman

The following is a statement attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

On the second anniversary of the kidnapping of Alan Jara, former governor of the Department of Meta, from a United Nations vehicle in Colombia, the Secretary-General again calls on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to immediately release Mr. Jara.  The FARC is responsible for Mr. Jara’s physical well-being and should provide proof that he is alive to his family, which has wrongly suffered his forced absence.

The Secretary-General urgently appeals to the FARC and others to release all those kidnapped and to stop this inhumane practice.  It is a gross violation of human rights and international humanitarian law that has inflicted terrible suffering on the Colombian people.

**Iraq

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was invited to attend the inaugural meeting of the Iraqi Governing Council, which convened at its new Headquarters in central Baghdad on Sunday.

Vieira de Mello was invited by the Chair of the Governing Council to say a few words at the inauguration.  He told the 25 members that the Secretary-General commended the members of the governing council for the courage they were demonstrating in assuming this heavy responsibility.  He added that the United Nations was working closely with the Coalition Provisional Authority and would spare no effort to support the Council to ensure its success.

In a statement read at the press conference, Vieira de Mello said the creation of the Council marked “the first major development towards the restoration of Iraq’s rightful status as a fully sovereign State” and brings the Council one step closer towards fulfilling the explicit wish of the Security Council which, in resolution 1483, resolved that the day when Iraqis govern themselves must come quickly.

On Saturday, Vieira de Mello had travelled to Taif in Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz.  As part of his continuing consultations with Iraq’s neighbours, Vieira de Mello will travel to Damascus tomorrow.

We have more information on all these items available upstairs.

**World Food Programme

On a related note, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says it is alarmed by the rise in security incidents affecting its food aid operation in Iraq over the past month.  The agency has registered an increase in shootings, looting of storage facilities, and attacks on trucks bringing food into southern Iraq.

Since 10 June, there have been at least 12 incidents of looting and shooting in or near these facilities.

A press release is available upstairs.

**Liberia

Over the weekend, the Secretary-General’s Representative for Liberia, Abou Moussa, and Resident Coordinator, Marc de Bernis, returned to the capital, Monrovia.  In a letter to the Security Council last week, the Secretary-General had said he was sending the two back to Monrovia, to assist in preparations for the return to Liberia of United Nations and associated personnel.

The World Food Programme last Friday warned of a growing food crisis in Liberia, saying that hundreds of thousands of displaced people in camps outside Monrovia will soon face starvation if a peaceful solution is not reached immediately.  Arnold Vercken, WFP’s Deputy Director for West Africa, said, “Our trucks are loaded and ready to go, but we have no guarantees of safety and security.”

**Security Council

The Security Council today held consultations on Sierra Leone, to discuss the latest report by the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in that country, in which he presented the Council with three options for drawing down the United Nations peacekeeping presence.

The Council received a briefing on the report from Dmitri Titov, Director of the Africa Division in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, who outlines the three drawdown options, under which the troops in the Sierra Leone Mission –- currently numbering just over 13,000 –- would be drawn down completely either by June 2004, by June 2005, or by the end of 2004.  The Secretary-General recommends that the Council adopt the third option, ending the UN presence in Sierra Leone by December 2004.

The Council considered the various options, and we expect it to issue a statement to the press in the next few minutes.

Two reports received by the Security Council in recent days, which we flagged to you earlier, are now out on the racks:  the latest report by the Monitoring Group dealing with sanctions on individuals and entities linked to Al Qaeda, and the report of the Security Council mission that recently visited West Africa.

**International Civil Service Commission

Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette today met with the International Civil Service Commission Representatives of the Organizations of the Common System, and United Nations Staff Representatives during the fifty-seventh session of the Commission.

In her remarks, she welcomed the recommendations and proposals made by the Commission to modernize human resources management and to create new, results-oriented organizational cultures that promote high performance, continuous learning, and managerial excellence for the international civil service of the United Nations.

We have the full text of her remarks in the Spokesman’s Office.

**Human Rights

We have upstairs a statement from Acting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand G. Ramcharan, who welcomes the decision taken at last week’s African Union summit to strengthen women’s rights in Africa by adopting a protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.

That’s all I’ve got for you.  Any questions?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  I was a bit surprised by the text of Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello’s comments after the inauguration of the transitory authority in Iraq.  He said that this was a Government and that now Iraq was back in the community of nations.  I wonder what is really the position of the United Nations concerning the authority that has been put in place in Baghdad by the Coalition.

Deputy Spokesman:  It would be up to the members of the Security Council to address the issue of whether this governing council is the equivalent of the Iraqi Interim Authority mentioned in resolution 1483.

Question:  But Mr. Vieira de Mello seems already to have answered by himself.

Deputy Spokesman:  I will still wait for the Council to pass a verdict on that.

Thank you.

* *** *