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

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good afternoon.

**Guest at Noon Briefing

      Olara Otunnu, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, will join us today to talk about his recent visit to West Africa.

**Liberia

The United Nations national staff working in Liberia reports that, with fighting continuing in Monrovia, the situation in the capital is getting worse.

A water supply station from outside the capital, at the town of White Plains was destroyed, leaving virtually the entire city of 1 million people without clean water.

Humanitarian agencies are calling on rebel and government forces to stop fighting long enough to allow for the water supply station at White Plains to be repaired.  If the clean water supply is not quickly restored, lethal diseases such as cholera will spread quickly.

**Security Council

At 3:00 this afternoon, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Liberia, Jacques Klein, will brief the Security Council on the situation in that country, in closed consultations.

Following the consultations on Liberia, Mahmoud Kassem, the Chairman of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is scheduled to give an interim briefing on his panel’s work.

In its consultations, the Council also plans to discuss the follow up to the recent missions by the Security Council to Central and West Africa.

**Democratic Republic of Congo

The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo condemned the killing of civilians in Nizi, 40 kilometres North of Bunia, where 22 people, including women and children, were brutally murdered.  The Mission has sent out a reconnaissance team to assess the situation.

The Mission also said that preparations are ongoing for the deployment of Task Force 2 in Ituri, with the arrival, in Bunia, of Bangladeshi Blue Helmets. Helicopters of the Indian army, due to back the Mission’s armed units, are being assembled at this moment in Kisangani.  Troops from Nepal, Pakistan and Indonesia, as well as a Ghanaian medical unit, are also expected in Bunia.

We have more details in a press release upstairs.

**Iraq

According to the Office of the Iraq Programme, the total value of goods and supplies prioritized for delivery to Iraq, following consultations with the Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraqi representatives and United Nations agencies, reached $2.1 billion this week, with the addition of 64 food and three oil sector contracts.

Also, some $57 million worth of goods and supplies stranded at Iraq’s borders at the onset of war on 17 March have been safely delivered into the country.  The contracted items range from table salt and medicines to irrigation systems, lumber and electrical transformers.

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Ramiro Lopes da Silva, just returned from a three-day visit to Erbil, in the northern part of the country, where he met with local officials, representatives of the Coalition Provisional Authority and United Nations agencies to discuss the phase out of the “oil-for-food” programme, which has to be completed by 21 November.

Meanwhile, during the weekly humanitarian briefing in Baghdad, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said it was responding to an urgent request from Iraq’s Agriculture Ministry for supplies of fungicide for the winter crops.  It’s estimated that 80 per cent of the country’s winter grain crop is at risk.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) notes that since the war, Iraq has seen a dramatic increase in the number of children living on the streets of the capital.  Street children are a new and growing phenomenon in Iraq.  Working with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Iraq’s Labour and Social Affairs Ministry, UNICEF has opened a “drop in” centre for street children, where they have access to food and sanitary facilities and are also given the opportunity to speak to a social worker.  The agency is working on collecting reliable data on these children.

**UNIFIL

Out on the racks is the Secretary-General’s latest report to the Security Council on the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.

With the last violent exchange across the Blue Line occurring almost six months ago, this has been the longest period of relative calm since Israel withdrew three years ago after 22 years of occupation.  However, the most significant source of tensions along the line remains the persistent Israeli air violations of Lebanese airspace and the Hezbollah anti-aircraft fire directed towards Israeli villages.

Concerning the presence of Lebanese security forces in the South, the Secretary-General notes that, while their overall numbers have not been augmented, their activities and profile has increased.

United Nations demining work in southern Lebanon is also on the increase, in collaboration with the Lebanese Government and various outside donors.  One initiative of note is the “trees instead of mines” campaign, which has led to the planting of 30,000 trees in areas which used to be minefields.

The Secretary-General recommends to the Security Council that the Force’s mandate be renewed for a further six months, until the end of January next year.

**Afghanistan

Lakhdar Brahimi, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, met with the North Atlantic Council Ambassadors yesterday in Brussels.  Brahimi told Council members that security was fundamental for Afghanistan and that it would be addressed in the long run by the reform and strengthening of Afghan security structures.  However, in the interim, he said, the support of the international community was necessary for security outside of Kabul.

Also on Afghanistan, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced today that the country is about to harvest its biggest wheat crop in two decades, due in part to help from the FAO.

This year’s harvest is expected to amount to more than 4 million tons.  The country, where 85 per cent of the population depends on agriculture and chronic under-nutrition remains a major problem, will still need to import an estimated 1 million tons of wheat.

**Human Rights

The Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on freedom of religion or belief, Abdelfattah Amor, will visit Romania from 7 to 13 September, at the invitation of the Government.  We have a press release on that.

**Press Briefings

Tomorrow, our regular press briefing will take place here at 11:45 instead of at 12:00 to allow for the launching at noon of the Commission on the Private Sector and Development, an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).  The Secretary-General will introduce the co-chairs of the Commission, Paul Martin, Canada’s former Finance Minister, and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.  Mark Malloch-Brown, the UNDP’s Administrator, will also be there.

We have a press release with more information.

I’ll take your questions now, and Olara, if you’d like to come up, we’ll be happy to get to you in just a minute.

**Questions and Answers

Question:  What is the Secretary-General’s reaction to the death of the sons of Saddam Hussein?

Spokesman:  He has no reaction.

Question:  Have you seen the photos of the sons yet?

Spokesman:  I don’t know if he has.

Question:  Have you?

Spokesman:  I saw them on television this morning.

Question:  Do you think they look like the sons?  What is your reaction to them?

Spokesman:  I’m not an expert in that matter.  So my views are irrelevant.

Question:  Does the United Nations have anyone else looking at those photos right now?

Spokesman:  To my knowledge, United Nations personnel have not reviewed the photos.

Question:  And, just an unrelated question to that.  Do you know what’s going on at the circle?  There seems to be construction, or they’re planting something at the fountain.

Spokesman:  Well, like you and me, plants have a lifespan.  The hedges that have been around the Barbara Hepworth sculpture for 50 some-odd years were getting to the end of theirs.  So, they’ve been pulled out, the soil has been replaced and new hedges are going in today.

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