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

AND THE SPOKESWOMAN 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 Michele Montas, Spokeswoman for the General Assembly President.

Spokesman for the Secretary-General

Good afternoon.

**Sports

A short while ago the Secretary-General officially received a report entitled, “Sport as a Tool for Development and Peace:  Towards Achieving the Millennium Development Goals”.

To talk to you about this report, I will be joined shortly by the two chairs of the Task Force which drafted the report, UNICEF Executive Director, Carol Bellamy, and the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace, Adolf Ogi.

Copies of the report are available today in the documents counter.

**Security Council - Today

The Security Council today is holding consultations on Sierra Leone and other matters.

Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Hedi Annabi introduced the latest report by the Secretary-General on the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), which was issued yesterday.

Security Council President, Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry of the United Kingdom, is hosting the monthly luncheon with the Secretary-General today.

**Security Council - Yesterday

Yesterday afternoon, the Security Council failed to adopt a resolution on the Middle East, which demanded that Israel desist from any threat to the safety of the elected President of the Palestinian Authority.

The draft resolution had also demanded a complete cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terrorism, provocation, incitement and destruction.

One permanent member, the United States, voted against, eleven members voted in favour and three abstained on the resolution, which was sponsored by the Sudan, Syria, Pakistan and South Africa.

**Liberia

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Liberia, Jacques Klein, in an interview with UN Radio this morning, said he was delighted to see an announcement by the Nigerian Government that it was clamping down on former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s activities while in exile.

Klein has expressed his concerns over reports that Taylor was exerting influence over government members that were still in Monrovia.  Klein said it is important that the Nigerian Government has made a very strong statement.

On the humanitarian front, the World Food Programme (WFP) has sent a consignment of food to tens of thousands of people in the Liberian city of Buchanan for the first time since heavy fighting between government forces and rebel factions erupted in and around the capital, Monrovia.

A convoy of food trucks arrived last night, following the deployment just outside the city of troops from the West African peacekeeping force, ECOMIL.  Distribution is due to start today.

WFP estimates that it will need some 9,000 tonnes of food a month to feed 500,000 people in Liberia.

We have press release on that.

**Sudan

We have just learned from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) signed an agreement today that would allow “free and unimpeded” humanitarian access to the Darfur region, which covers some 20 per cent of that country’s territory.

The announcement comes after Tom Eric Vraalsen, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs, completed his mission to the Darfur region.

The humanitarian situation in Darfur has deteriorated over the past six months due in part to fighting and banditry that has resulted in the displacement of large numbers of civilians.

UN humanitarian agencies hope to regain access to all of the 500,000 people who had been receiving aid before access constraints began in March.  We hope to have more details soon.

**IAEA

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Nuclear Security Fund has reached nearly 23 million dollars in pledges for voluntary contributions from 21 countries, with the money to be used to strengthen countries’ nuclear security arrangements against terrorism and other malicious acts.

“On the safety and security front, we can take satisfaction in the degree of progress”, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei told the General Conference in Vienna on Monday.  “But we must remain vigilant, and clearly much work is still urgently needed.”

We have a press release from IAEA on that, and I’ve been told that Security Council consultations have just adjourned.

**Special Court for Sierra Leone

The Special Court for Sierra Leone said that an alleged former junta commander, Santigie Kanu, known as “Brigadier 55”, was transferred today into its custody.

The Special Court has issued a 17-count indictment against Kanu, and the charges against him include crimes against humanity, violations of the Geneva Conventions, and serious violations of other international humanitarian law.

Kanu is being held at the Court’s detention facility in Freetown, and will make his initial appearance before a Special Court judge early next week.  He had been in the custody of Sierra Leone’s national courts since March on treason charges.

We have a press release from the Court.

**ICTY

Today in The Hague, the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia decided that the initial sentence of seven and a half years of imprisonment given to Milorad Krnojelac, whom it deemed to be a co-perpetrator of crimes against non-Serbs in the Foca detention camp, was too little.  The appeals chamber expanded his culpability and raised the sentence imposed on him to 15 years imprisonment.

**Budget

Sudan today paid $81,000 to the UN regular budget, becoming the 103rd Member State to pay its dues in full this year.

**Press conference this afternoon

Press conferences this afternoon, as we mentioned to you yesterday, at 12:45 Mike McCann, the Chief of Security and Safety Service here at the UN, will brief you on security arrangements during the General Debate that begins Tuesday of next week. Delegations, of course, can watch this briefing in Studio 4 downstairs.

**Press Conferences Tomorrow

A number of press conferences tomorrow at 10 a.m.  Shashi Tharoor, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, will be joined by Brigitte Parry, the European School Net Networks Manager, and others, at a simultaneous press conference from New York, Geneva, Dar es Salaam and Kampala, to launch the “World Summit Event for Schools”.

A joint effort by the UN Cyber School Bus and European School Net, the World Summit is a three-month-long event offering students worldwide online activities examining the impact of information and communications technologies on human rights.

Copies of the media alert, and a press release with more information, are available in my office.  Then, at 12:30 tomorrow, the Brazilian singer, composer and Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, will be holding a press conference.  Mr. Gil will be giving a concert in the General Assembly Hall on Friday, in memory of our colleagues killed in the bombing of the UN offices in Baghdad last month.

**Ahmad Fawzi

Finally, we don’t normally announce appointments at the Director level from this podium, but I thought you might be interested in knowing that the former Deputy Spokesman for Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Ahmad Fawzi, has returned to New York from London, where he has been Director of the Information Centre there since 1997.

You will also remember him as the Spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi in Afghanistan, including during the Bonn talks in November 2001, and most recently as Spokesman for Sergio Vieira de Mello in Baghdad in June and July of this year.  He also was Sergio’s Spokesman in East Timor at the time of the first elections there in August 2000.

Here in New York he will be Director, and he is, as of Monday of this week, functioning as the Director of DPI’s News and Media Division, which oversees the UN Web site, the issuance of press releases, UN Television and UN Radio, and much more.

I’m sure you’ll be glad to see his smiling face around the building once again.  Any questions before we go to Michele?  Yes, Lee?

Questions and Answers

Question:  (Inaudible) ... Is the briefing tomorrow at 10 o’clock, is that here in this room?

Spokesman:  Yes.  Ok.  Michele, what’s going on with the General Assembly?

Spokeswoman for General Assembly President

Well, thank you, Fred, and good afternoon.

Well, the General Assembly, this morning, is taking care of organizational matters before, of course, the high-level plenary, which is planned on HIV/AIDS on Monday.  The General Committee of the GA is meeting right now on the agenda of the fifty-eighth session in Conference Room 4.  There is a list of about 96 speakers to address the question of the representation of the Republic of China, Taiwan, in the agenda.  So we expect the discussion to go on for a great part of the afternoon.  It had barely started when I came up.

The provisional agenda contains, as you know, 173 items.  Two items on the agenda, that of the Comorian Island of Mayotte and the question of the Malagasy islands of Glorieuses, Juan de Nova, Europa and Basas da India were postponed this morning to the next session of the Assembly, which means the fifty-ninth.

As you know the general debate will start on Tuesday morning, we have so far 192 speakers inscribed on the list, among them 57 heads of State, 27 heads of government, three vice-presidents.

And the General Debate will be preceded on Monday, as I mentioned, by the high-level plenary meeting on HIV/AIDS as you know, which is devoted to the follow-up of the twenty-sixth special session on AIDS and the implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS.  We have for that meeting on Monday, a total of 136 speakers inscribed on the list, among them 19 heads of State.  I will give more information tomorrow on the HIV/AIDS meeting on Monday.

Spokesman:  Any questions?  Yes.

Questions and Answers

Question:  Are any...  Have you gotten yet to the allocation of items to the main Committees and when the main Committees would like to start (inaudible)?

Spokeswoman for General Assembly President:  Not yet.  It’s probably going to be tomorrow.

* *** *