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.

**Guest at Noon

It’s a pleasure to welcome Nils Kastberg, the Director of UNICEF’s Emergency Programmes, who is here to talk to you about humanitarian appeals being launched today for southern Africa and Zimbabwe.  We’ll be getting to him in just a minute.

**Consolidated Appeal

On that subject, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) today has launched a one-year Regional Consolidated Appeal of $530 million for Southern Africa, that includes Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, to provide life-saving assistance for 6.5 million people severely weakened by consecutive failed harvests, extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS.

We have a press release with more details.

**Regional Organizations Meeting

The Secretary-General this morning opened the fifth high-level meeting between the United Nations and the world’s main regional organizations, telling them that the world’s increasing interdependence also brings great vulnerability, as borders cannot easily stop the movements of terrorists, warlords, small arms, refugees, narcotics, diseases and other hazards.

Meanwhile, he added, the question of when, and on whose authority, military force should be used arouses great passions, not only in those States where force is deployed but everywhere.

He told the organizations gathered today and tomorrow for the high-level meeting, “We must remember that we are all in this together.  Let us not add to our burdens by descending into unproductive polarizing over our differences.”

The Secretary-General emphasized that the world’s institutions need to keep pace with changes; that we must be pro-active not only in dealing against common threats but also against the factors that allow them to thrive; and that we must all promote the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter.  He said, “If we build on these fundamentals, I believe we can develop a new vision of global security”, which would respect human rights while confronting the threat of terrorism.

We have copies of his remarks in my office.

**Liberia

With the capture of Liberia’s second-largest city, Buchanan, by rebel forces, thousands more Liberians have been displaced, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says.  The United Nations has received reports that more than 50,000 people are moving towards Harbel, around the Roberts International Airport, which is some 50 kilometres east of the capital, Monrovia.

The fighting in Monrovia is overwhelming health facilities, with nearly all energy devoted to treating the wounded.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that rebel fighting has spread to another camp on the outskirts of Monrovia, in the Samukai area, which housed more than 3,500 Sierra Leonean refugees, many of whom have now fled.  Some local UNHCR staff living in the area also fled their homes.  We have more details in today’s briefing notes from UNHCR.

**Iraq - Humanitarian

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says that it expects the first convoy of refugees returning to Iraq since the fall of the previous government to leave Saudi Arabia's Rafha camp this evening.  More than 240 Iraqis will be leaving in the convoy, which is expected to cross into southern Iraq early Wednesday morning.  The convoy will make its way to Basra, in southern Iraq, through Kuwait.

The UNHCR expects more than 3,600 refugees to leave the camp and return to Iraq before the end of the year in convoys set to depart from Rafha at 10-day intervals.

As the situation in Iraq improves, more refugees will be seeking to go back with UNHCR assistance.  Of the some 1 million Iraqi refugees and other people of concern to UNHCR worldwide, as many as 500,000 could seek help to return to Iraq, with significant numbers expected next year.

On activities relating to the “oil-for-food” programme, weekly meetings of UN and Iraqi experts and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq have so far produced a list of prioritized contracts valued at almost $2.5 billion for early delivery to Iraq.

On the political side, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, held discussions today with Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

Among other issues, they discussed the work of the Council, its negotiations on appointing its leadership, the processes being contemplated to move toward drafting the Constitution, and the technical assistance the United Nations can provide to the Council on a number of fronts, including the preparation for and holding of elections.

**Security Council

The Security Council today held an open meeting on the work of the Committee dealing with the sanctions imposed under Resolution 1267 on Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated individuals and entities, during which it heard a briefing by the Committee’s Chairman, Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz of Chile.

He said that the Committee has improved its consolidated list of individuals associated with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in recent months, and he strongly encouraged States to provide any additional information for inclusion on that list.

**Rwanda

The trial of Sylvestre Gacumbitsi, the former mayor of Rusomo Commune, began today at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, with prosecutors charging that the accused is guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, for extermination, murder and rape.  The court heard from a former BBC journalist who was in Rwanda in 1994 and described the many dead bodies he saw at the time.

We have a press release on that, as well as one on the major moves that the Rwanda Tribunal has taken to strengthen its relationship with groups of Rwandan genocide survivors.

**Afghanistan

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has assisted more than 300,000 Afghan refugees to return home this year from Pakistan and Iran.  More than 50,000 other refugees have spontaneously repatriated from Iran over the same period.  UNHCR believes there were 1.1 million Afghan refugees in Iran and 1.2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan at the start of this year.

The UNHCR said that despite ongoing security problems in parts of Afghanistan and tremendous economic needs, Afghan refugees are still going back in significant numbers.  Each returning family receives a UNHCR aid package and food from the World Food Programme.

**UNICEF – Manchester United

Soccer fans, this afternoon, Nane Annan will deliver a message on behalf of her husband, the Secretary-General, at an event of the United Nations Children’s Fund and Manchester United Football Club that will take place at 3 p.m. on the North Lawn here at Headquarters.  The Secretary-General is expected to stop by.

UNICEF’s Special Representative for the United Kingdom Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United’s Manager Peter Kenyon, together with four of the club’s biggest stars, UNICEF Ambassador George Weah and a group of local school children will hold a soccer clinic to celebrate Manchester United’s commitment to UNICEF through the ‘United for UNICEF’ partnership, which raised over $1.5 million for ending child exploitation.

We have a press release with more details.

**Human Rights

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) has just finalized a digest that compiles the findings of judicial and quasi-judicial bodies of the United Nations and regional organizations on the issue of the protection of human rights in the context of measures against terrorism.

The digest is intended to assist policy makers and other concerned parties in developing a vision of counter-terrorism strategies that uphold legal and human rights obligations and help to bring the perpetrators of terrorist acts to justice.  The digest is available on the Web site of the High Commissioner (www.unhchr.ch).

**WHO

Director-General Jong-Wook Lee of the World Health Organization today announced his plans to rapidly step up WHO’s effort to eradicate polio worldwide.

From the end of August to December, the key polio endemic countries would conduct mass immunization campaigns aimed at reaching a total of 175 million children in India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Egypt, which together accounted for 99 per cent of new cases of polio worldwide.

We have a press release on that.

**Media

This is a little bit early, but it’s DPI’s timing.

Media leaders and international policy makers will take part in a landmark meeting to be broadcast worldwide this December –- so now mark your calendars -- from Geneva.  It’s the World Electronic Media Forum, to discuss the role that the media plays in issues ranging from violence to development.  The Forum is being organized by the Department of Public Information, together with the Government of Switzerland and the European Broadcasting Union.  That will happen from 9 to 11 December.

We’ll try to give you a reminder when December comes around.

**Press Conference Tomorrow

At 11 tomorrow, Carl Gray, the Economic Affairs Officer in the Department for Economic and Social Affairs, will be here to launch the “Economic Report on Africa 2003”, which is the flagship publication of the Economic Commission for Africa.

Advance copies of the report may be obtained from Gumisai Mutume of the Department of Public Information.

**Secretary-General’s Press Conference

And finally, we will not do a press briefing tomorrow at noon because at 1, the Secretary-General will be coming here to give a press conference in connection with this two-day meeting that we told you about; but also to take your questions on all subjects as part of his mid-year press conference.  And we all look forward to your presence at that event.

Any questions before we go to Nils?  Yes, Richard?

Questions and Answers

Question:  I don’t know if you’ve discussed it, but for broadcast purposes can you just put on the record the reason that the Secretary-General has made adjustments to the war crimes Prosecutor’s office for Bosnia and Rwanda that you were talking about?

Spokesman:  I can’t go into the details of the letter sent to the Council this morning.  But yesterday I think he hinted very broadly to you what his thinking was.  He said, if I can quote from his press encounter yesterday, “There is a sense that as we approach the end and both tribunals are being asked to come up with a completion strategy to be able to finish their work and close down the courts, it may be necessary to have two prosecutors to tackle that essential part of their work.”  So, I think his motivation as expressed there was, let’s speed up the work in order to reach completion by a reasonable date.

Question:  I would be interested to know how much of DPI or UN money is being spent on that conference on electronic media; is there a way of finding out?

Spokesman:  I think so.  DPI is broke as far as I know, so I assume it’s not a lot.

Question:  Did you say DPI is broken or broke?

Spokesman:  Broke.  Broke.

Question:  I also asked a few months, weeks ago; may be you answered when I wasn’t here.  What went into the decision to assign Aramark instead of Restaurant Associates the UN cafeteria contract?

Spokesman:  Competitive bidding.

Question:  Meaning they could raise prices and...?

Spokesman:  They came in cheaper and they had the competence to do the job.  You don’t like the food?

Question:  I am just going by what other people have said.

Spokesman:  You guys are hard to please.  Anything else of substance?  Okay, Nils, welcome to the briefing.

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