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 Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good afternoon.

**Liberia

I have the following statement on Liberia attributable to the Spokesman:

“The Secretary-General is outraged at the continued high incidence of civilian casualties in and around Monrovia, as the result of indiscriminate shelling.

“He joins others in demanding that all concerned respect the ceasefire agreed to in Accra.  It is imperative that the siege of Monrovia be lifted, so that desperately needed humanitarian relief can be brought in, peacekeepers can be quickly deployed and President Charles Taylor can depart.

“The Secretary-General reminds those who continue to wage war in Liberia and to use means that cause so much suffering to the civilian population, that they will be held individually accountable for any war crimes they commit.  By their reckless and criminal behaviour, they are disqualifying themselves from any leadership role in the future of their country.”

The Secretary-General this morning also spoke to reporters at the Security Council stakeout, specifically naming one faction, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), as having disqualified itself from a future leadership role, saying, “I cannot see how they would expect the people to accept them, after the suffering they’ve put them through.  So they should think about that.”

We also put a statement out late Friday expressing the Secretary-General’s pleasure at the United States announcement that it would position “appropriate military capabilities” off the coast of Liberia, in order to support the deployment of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) forces to that country.  The Secretary-General today said he was happy that US ships were headed towards Liberia and added, “I expect the US troops will have an important role to play.”

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs gave an update on the situation in Liberia over the weekend, noting, “People are getting hungrier and hungrier everyday and there is much less for sale in the markets.”

**Security Council

This morning, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1493 on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The resolution authorizes the UN to increase the strength of its mission in the DRC to 10,800 troops.  With this resolution, the Council also imposes a ban, for an initial period of 12 months, on the supply of weapons to armed groups and militias operating in Ituri, as well as North and South Kivu provinces.

In a statement to the Security Council immediately following the vote, the Secretary-General congratulated members for adopting a resolution which gives the UN mission in the DRC the strong mandate it needs to fulfil its difficult mission.

The resolution, he said, gave the UN a key role to help the Congolese achieve a sustainable peace leading up to a democratically elected government.  However, he added, “There will be no substitute for the resolve of the Congolese leaders to implement their commitments towards peace.”

The Secretary-General also noted that when the Council recently authorized the deployment of the Interim Emergency Multinational Force in Ituri, it showed that a timely and effective response by the international community can put an end to violence.

The Council then moved into closed consultations on the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon.  Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno introduced to the Council the Secretary-General’s latest report on that mission.

**Regional Conferences

Tomorrow and Wednesday, here at UN Headquarters, the Secretary-General will host the fifth High-Level Meeting between the United Nations and Regional Organizations.

The discussions will focus on the need for the United Nations and regional organizations to work together with redoubled vigour to face jointly the new challenges to international peace and security, including international terrorism.

Twenty regional and subregional organizations are expected to attend.  These include the African Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization of American States and the Association of South East Asian Nations.

The full list, as well as a complete press release, is available upstairs.

**Sergio Vieira de Mello

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, is now back in Baghdad.  Today, he met with a visiting team from Human Rights Watch.  They discussed the current human rights situation in the country and explored ways it could be improved.

**Rwanda

Over the past hour, the Secretary-General was meeting with the Prosecutor of the two international tribunals, Carla Del Ponte, and, earlier today, he was asked whether her tasks as Prosecutor for the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda would be split.

The Secretary-General said that was a decision for the Security Council to make, and he noted the discussions going on in the Security Council over whether the work of the two tribunals would be more effective if each had a separate prosecutor.  There is a sense, he said, that as both tribunals are being asked to come up with a completion strategy for their work, “it may be necessary to have two Prosecutors to tackle that essential part of their work.”

We have a transcript of his comments upstairs.

**UNICEF

The United Nations Children’s Fund is rushing emergency medicine, blankets and baby bodysuits to children in Puno, Peru, where thousands of young lives are in danger because of freezing temperatures.

UNICEF Country Representative Andres Franco and the Peruvian Minister for Health, Alvaro Vidal, have travelled with the relief effort to Puno to deliver much-needed antibiotics for the treatment of respiratory diseases and pneumonia.

Another region, Cuzco, is also at risk; UNICEF officials will be visiting the area next week.

We have a press release on that.

**WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) will host a virtual press conference on polio eradication tomorrow, at noon Geneva time, which if you want to follow it will be 6 a.m. New York time.

In his second week as Director-General of WHO, Dr. Jong-Wook Lee will outline plans to rapidly step up the global effort to eradicate polio.  And he will also introduce Dr. David Heymann, who successfully managed the SARS outbreak earlier this year, as Representative of the Director-General for Polio Eradication.

There is a press release on that.

**Press Conference

At 12:30 p.m. this afternoon, immediately after this, Ambassador Inocencio Arias of Spain, the Chairman of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, will be joined by Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz of Chile, the Chairman of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee, and they will be here to discuss the work of their respective committees.

**Guest at Noon Tomorrow

And finally, our guest at the noon briefing tomorrow, will be Nils Kastberg, the Director of UNICEF’s Emergency Programmes, and he will be here to talk about the humanitarian appeals for southern Africa and Zimbabwe.

That’s all I have.  Yes?

Questions and Answers

Question:   Does the Secretary-General expect Mrs. Del Ponte to accept the proposal to split the prosecution tasks?

Spokesman:  Well, first of all, that proposal would have to come from the Security Council.  So, the Council, as he mentioned this morning, is in the process of discussing it.  And so, I think that’s all I can say.  You’ll have to ask her how she’d respond to any decision made by the Security Council.

Question:   Can you elaborate more on the reasons for splitting that mandate?

Spokesman:  The Secretary-General again mentioned this morning that it’s the discussion by Council members, as well as by the two tribunals, of their so-called completion strategy.  How are they going to wrap up their work given the enormous cost of running these two tribunals? And so, it was in that context that some discussion began concerning the creation of the second prosecutorial position.  That idea, by the way, has been around from the very beginning.  There was among several members of the Council a position favouring creating two prosecutors right at the outset.  That was not done for a number of reasons.  So the idea has re-emerged in the context of the completion strategy.

Question:   Did the Secretary-General and Mrs. Del Ponte discuss some obvious problems that the prosecutor told the Security Council about a year ago, meaning that the reluctance of some parts of the Rwandan Government to cooperate with the Tribunal, was that an issue today?

Spokesman:  I did not get a detailed read out of his meeting and that was not mentioned to me as something that had come up this morning.  But that doesn’t mean it didn’t come up.  So, I suggest you ask her.  I think she’ll be around here for a couple of days, should she want to comment on that.

Thank you very much.

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