DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY THE OFFICES OF THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL AND THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT

Following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, and Richard Sydenham, Spokesman for the General Assembly President.

Spokesman for the Secretary-General

**Visiting journalists

A special welcome to our visiting journalists from Africa and the Middle East, is that right?  Welcome.

Good Afternoon.

**Incoming Spokesperson for General Assembly

The mystery woman on my right is Michele Montas, and I am not going to tell you who she is.  I am going to leave that to Richard Sydenham when he gets to his briefing.

**Guest at Noon

Our guest at today’s briefing will be Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund, or UNICEF, and Jong-Wook Lee, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, and they will be talking to you about advances in child health.

**SG In Geneva

The Secretary-General was in Geneva over the weekend as you know, and on Saturday he met with the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council to conduct a thorough review of the main issues regarding Iraq.  Discussions on the Middle East were also on the agenda of the meeting.

In a press conference following the meeting, the Secretary-General said that the ministers had a good discussion in a constructive atmosphere on Iraq, with a view to identifying points of convergence.  While consensus is essential, and achievable, it is not enough, he said, adding that “the Council’s approach must be coherent and well defined”.

In answering a question about the timing of a vote on Iraq, the Secretary-General said that should be addressed by the members themselves and added that the vital thing is not just voting, but having “a solid and workable resolution” that will help to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Regarding the Middle East, the Secretary-General said the permanent members of the Security Council had reaffirmed their commitment to the Quartet’s “Road Map” and recognized that both sides have obligations under the Road Map that must be fulfilled.  He also announced that the Quartet would meet at the Principals’ level later this month in New York to consider all relevant aspects of the issue and determine how best to help the parties move forward with the process.

At the start of the meeting with the foreign ministers, the Secretary-General spoke of Anna Lindh, the recently assassinated Swedish Foreign Minister, saying she had been a great Foreign Minister and a determined friend of the United Nations.  He went on:  “But most of all we miss her.  Her personality, her dynamism, her intellect and the passion with which she defended causes she so strongly believed in”.  The participants then stood for a moment of silence in Anna Lindh’s honour.

Earlier in the day, the Secretary-General had two bilateral meetings at his hotel, the first with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and the second with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

**SG –- Press comments

Coming into the building this morning, the Secretary-General spoke to reporters, saying he thought the session in Geneva among the five permanent Security Council members had been very good, adding, “You shouldn’t forget that this was the first time since the war that the permanent five have sat in one room to discuss this crucial issue of Iraq”.

He said that there had been areas of convergence, and that the five foreign ministers had agreed that power should be handed over to the Iraqis as soon as possible.  The question, he added, is what kind of timetable there should be for handing over power, with some discussion of a short-term timetable for an interim Iraqi government and then a longer-term one for elections and a democratically elected government.

The Secretary-General said of the UN role that it has to be clearly defined by the Security Council and achievable, and the security environment should permit the United Nations to do its work.  But he added that, while the United Nations has experience in facilitating political processes and establishing democratic governments, “we are not going to go in and run Iraq”, he said.

The Secretary-General was also asked about the breakdown of the World Trade Organization talks in Cancún, Mexico, and said he knew that it was going to be a difficult session, but added, “I had expected it to achieve much more than they achieved”.  Not much was achieved, he acknowledged, saying, “I hope that is not the end of the road and that the parties will go back and reflect and then come back in a determined fashion to try and fashion an agreement within the next year or so”.

We have the transcript of his comments available upstairs.

**Statement Attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General:  Trade talks in Cancún

We have the following formal reaction in this statement attributable to the Spokesman:

“The Secretary-General regrets that the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancún was suspended without agreement, but hopes this is not the end of the road, and that the Doha Round will still deliver on its promise of greater exchange and prosperity for all, especially the developing countries.

“He also notes that for the first time the developing countries have found their collective voice in international trade negotiations and acted in concert to defend their interests, notably on the issue of agricultural protection and subsidies.  He believes this is a positive development which holds great hope for the future.”

**Middle East –- Roed-Larsen

The Security Council today began its open debate on the Middle East with a briefing from Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, who said that the recent cycle of terror attacks and extrajudicial killings has broken the Palestinian ceasefire and brought the process to a standstill.  Over the past month, 81 people have lost their lives to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:  38 Israelis and 43 Palestinians.

Roed-Larsen said that, since a suicide bombing in Jerusalem killed 23 people on 19 August, violence has increased, with Israel declaring an “all-out war” against Hamas and other groups; late last week, Israel announced that its Security Cabinet decided in principle to remove Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat “in a manner and at a time of its choosing”.

Roed-Larsen noted that “Arafat is democratically elected, and as such, the legitimate leader of the Palestinians.  He embodies Palestinian identity and national aspirations.  He is now far from irrelevant”, he said.

He added that unfortunately, “the implementation of the Road Map never effectively began”.  “I am afraid”, he said, “viewing the situation with hindsight, that we moved too slowly and with incremental steps at the initial stages of implementation”.

Given the current situation, he said, “It might be appropriate to speed up the Road Map process” and take bold steps on settlements and security to help jump-start the process.  If the Road Map is abandoned, he warned, “We would surrender to those who want to reign through force and terror”.

We have Roed-Larsen’s briefing notes available upstairs.  There are about 40 speakers inscribed for today’s debate.

**Guinea-Bissau

The Secretary-General, in a statement issued on Sunday, condemned the weekend coup d'état in Guinea-Bissau and called for the restoration of constitutional order.

He further called on the parties concerned not to resort to any acts of violence or retribution and urged that every effort be made to ensure the safety and security of all.

**Liberia

The Security Council has scheduled a meeting with potential troop and civilian police-contributing countries to the proposed UN peacekeeping operation in Liberia.

Recommendations on the size, structure and mandate of a follow-on UN force in Liberia are contained in the report of the Secretary-General, which was distributed to Security Council members Friday afternoon.

Council members are scheduled to hear a briefing tomorrow on the report by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Jacques Klein.

On the humanitarian front, aid workers arrived in the small coastal town of Harper in southern Liberia over the weekend for the first time since May when forces from the rebel group “Movement for Democracy in Liberia” (MODEL) put an abrupt halt to relief efforts there.

**Afghanistan

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Afghan Ministry of Education, has started a key workshop on the coordination of teacher training programmes in Afghanistan.

UNICEF said that it would mark the beginning of a new era for raising the quality of teachers in the country.  There are an estimated 100,000 teachers now working in the formal education sector in Afghanistan.

However, less than 15 per cent of teachers possess a professional teaching qualification –- most have less than a Grade 12 schooling.

UNICEF has supported a nationwide rapid training programme for 26,000 primary school teachers to date in 2003, focusing on new methodologies for the teaching of Dari and Pashto languages as well as mine-risk education.

Thirty per cent of the participants in this training programme have been women.  For more details, please pick up the briefing note from Kabul in my office.

**Guatemala

On Guatemala, the Secretary-General's latest report on the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) is out on the racks today.

In his report, the Secretary-General recommends a renewal of the mandate of the mission to 31 December 2004 to contribute to a smooth transition of the new Government that will assume office in January 2004 and to continue to accompany Guatemala in its peace-building process.

We have that report upstairs.

**Annual Report

The Secretary-General’s annual report to the General Assembly on the work of the United Nations has come out as a document, and in it, the Secretary-General says “the United Nations is not an end in itself.  Rather, it is an instrument for achieving common ends”.  As a result, he says, to achieve its purposes, the United Nations requires a shared consensus about its fundamental goals from its Members.

He notes that the past year has been a trying one in terms of peace and security, with the war in Iraq severely testing the principle of collective security and the resilience of the Organization, and he says that the 19 August attack on UN headquarters in Iraq was “the most deliberate and vicious attack against the United Nations in its history”.

While the immediate and urgent challenges of peace and security require attention, he says, it is also important that they should not divert attention from UN work in economic and social development.  At present, the report notes, there is a wide gap between the rhetoric of inclusion and the reality of exclusion.

**OIOS-Vienna

The Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) today opened an office in Vienna, at that city’s International Centre, and the Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services, Dileep Nair, spoke at a ceremony in Vienna today to welcome the opening.

Nair said that “the decision to relocate parts of the Investigations Division, while maintaining a small staff at the UN Headquarters in New York, was based on strategic considerations as well as on the reality of resource constraints”.  The move will allow the Office to save travel time, with some 90 per cent of its investigations located away from New York Headquarters.

We have a press release on that.

**SG -- IAEA

There are two messages from the Secretary-General today.

One is to the Forty-Seventh General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, delivered by Nobuyasu Abe, the Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs.

In the message, the Secretary-General expresses his support for the Agency’s continuing efforts to strengthen international safeguards and calls for the early resumption of the Agency’s safeguards activities in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

He also points out that while the international community is rightly concerned about preventing the potentially dangerous use of nuclear technology, that technology remains an important factor in economic development.

**SG’s message on landmines

The other message is to the Fifth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and their Destruction, in which the Secretary-General notes that since the entry into force of the Convention in 1999, more than two-thirds of all States have banned anti-personnel mines and joined efforts to address their impact on people.  He calls on those States that have not yet done so to become part of this process without delay.

In the message, which was delivered in Bangkok, by Hak-Su Kim, the Executive Secretary-General of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Secretary-General also urges all States affected by anti-personnel mines to do their utmost to develop and implement plans to clear mined areas, to destroy stockpiles, and to provide victim assistance and mine risk education.

We have the full text of both messages available in my office.  Hang on, now we’re coming to the end.

**SG Lecture

The Secretary-General’s lecture series continues today at 1:30, in the Trusteeship Council chamber, with a lecture on “Islam and the West” by Professor Seyyed Hussein Nasr of George Washington University.  The Secretary-General will introduce Professor Nasr by questioning whether there is any clash of civilizations, and stating his belief that in every country, there are people of different religions and cultures who need to respect each other and live peacefully together.  We have embargoed copies of the Secretary-General’s opening remarks upstairs.

**Chinese-language UN News Centre Web site launched.

DPI, the Department of Public Information has asked me to inform you that as part of its ongoing efforts to ensure multi-lingual development at the United Nations Web site, they have just launched the Chinese-language version of the UN News Centre on the Internet.

In less than a year, the Department has thus completed its project to make the UN News Centre available in all official languages -– the Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and Russian versions were added to the sites originally launched in English and French.

All sites provide continuous updates of breaking news and share many of the same database-driven features.

**Guest at Noon tomorrow

Finally, our guest at tomorrow’s briefing will be Ross Mountain, the Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Liberia, to talk about the humanitarian situation in that country.

I am sorry that took so much time.  Any questions before we go to Richard?  Akram?

Questions and Answers

Question:  Any new development in the distribution of responsibility between the UN and the US after the meeting of Secretary Powell to Iraq?

Spokesman:  Akram, I have nothing to add to the update I gave you of this weekend’s meetings.  If there are no questions, Richard do you want to introduce Michele Montas?

      Spokesman for General Assembly President

Spokesman:  Yes, yes, I don’t want to leave you in suspense any longer.

I am very happy to say that President-elect Hunte has appointed

Ms. Michele Montas as his spokesperson for the fifty-eighth session.  Ms. Montas is a radio journalist from Haiti and, I’m very happy to add, former colleague from UN Radio.  So, welcome, Michele.  After this briefing, I suggest you contact her directly for how best to get in touch with her.  The Press Kit for the fifty-eighth session is available on the UN Web site and I can give you that address after this session and it is also available in hard copy at the documents counter on the third floor..

The closing plenary meeting of the fifty-seventh session of the General Assembly took place this afternoon.  In his concluding remarks, President Kavan will tell delegates that the United Nations has been through a very difficult year.  During the fifty-seventh session, “the General Assembly discussed a wide range of issues from conflict prevention to more effective implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, from more coordinated and integrated follow-up to major United Nations conferences and summits to one of the most important issues on the UN agenda -– reform of the United Nations system”.

President Kavan goes on, “We have reached consensus and adopted many resolutions and decisions, however, some of the ideas and proposals have not been finalized.  I expect that consideration of these ideas will continue in the fifty-eighth session”.  “However”, he goes on, “I also hope that the United Nations will focus not only on General Assembly matters, and its revitalization, but also on further involvement of the UN in guiding the world’s affairs.  I am convinced that the role of the United Nations should be far more decisive than it has been in recent times and that it should correctly reflect the role assigned to it in the Charter.  This obviously applies also to the Security Council and its responsibilities in areas of maintenance of international peace and security, today particularly including Iraq”.  President Kavan goes on to say that, “For the United Nations to be better equipped for such a key role, it has to implement major reform.  I hope that some time in the not too distant future, the Security Council will reflect both the needs and the geopolitical situation of the beginning of twenty-first century”.

In welcoming President-elect Hunte, President Kavan is confident that under President Hunte’s able stewardship, the fifty-eighth session of the General Assembly will achieve many fruitful results.

The text of his statement will be available, embargoed against delivery, on the third floor.

The meeting will commence with adoption of a Presidential draft resolution condemning the bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq on 19 August 2003. 

Other items to be decided will be appointments to fill vacancies in subsidiary organs, General and complete disarmament; draft decisions on sustainable development and international economic cooperation; and revitalization of the work of the General assembly, and other items are ones that will be referred on to the fifty-eighth session.  Any questions? 

If I may finally, I would like to thank you very much; all members of the press, UN Correspondents’ Association for your courtesy and professionalism to me throughout the past year, and I am sure you will be in very good hands with Michele.

Michele:  I look forward to that.

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