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

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 Marie Okabe, Associate Spokesman for the Secretary-General, and Michéle Montas, Spokeswoman for the General Assembly President.

Good afternoon.

**Security Council

The Security Council today here at UN Headquarters is holding an open meeting on women, peace and security.

Three years ago, the Security Council adopted resolution 1325, which recognized that women and girls both bear the brunt to armed conflict and are integral to any lasting solution.

In his presentation to the Security Council, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno said that when a UN peacekeeping operation is set up in a volatile environment, the United Nations has learned to listen to the voices of women and girls, as it is the only way to foster an equitable peace.  “We recognize”, Guéhenno said, “the enormous, positive impact that women can have, when their knowledge, skills and motivation are harnessed in the name of peace and rebuilding a country”.

He told Council members that different needs of women and men need to be taken into account in establishing programmes in peacekeeping operations.  For example, he said, in the past, disarmament and demobilization programmes only took into account the needs of the male combatant, while ignoring the women and girls who were either soldiers themselves, or served in a support role.  Now these programmes take into account the special needs of these women and girls.

Guéhenno also urged Member States to provide more female civilian police and military personnel to peacekeeping operations, and also called for the inclusion of women and men with experience in gender-based crimes, to help the UN address the high rates of violence against women that are common in post-conflict situations.

He told Security Council members that he intends to ensure that all future multidimensional peacekeeping operations include strong gender expertise.

Also addressing the Council was Amy Smythe, the Senior Gender Advisor for the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In addition to the 15 Council members, 23 other Member States are expected to speak.

Also linked to today’s meeting, we have available upstairs a press release on other events on women, peace and security, which will be taking place over the next few days.

**Security Council -- Tuesday

And to wrap up, yesterday afternoon, the Security Council, by a unanimous vote on resolution 1513, extended the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, until the end of next January.

In another open meeting immediately following that one, Benon Sevan, Executive Director of the Office of the Iraq Programme, briefed the Council on action taken for the termination of the “oil-for-food” programme.

He identified steps remaining for the United Nations, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the relevant Iraqi ministries to complete the transfer of projects, programme assets and related responsibilities to the CPA by 21 November.

**Financing for Development

The High-level Meeting on Financing for Development began today at UN Headquarters, and a report presented to the session by the Secretary-General assesses the current state of play in world trade negotiations, following the deadlock that occurred last month at the trade talks in Cancún, Mexico.

In his report, the Secretary-General advocates a number of reforms in the global financial system, including steps to organize orderly and fair exit strategies from debt crises, such as the one that struck Argentina in 2001, and better coordination among countries on tax issues, to reduce global tax dodging and illicit cross-border financial flows.

The Secretary-General will address tomorrow’s morning plenary, as will World Bank President James Wolfensohn, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Horst Kohler, UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero and UN Development Programme Administrator Mark Malloch Brown.

Press kits and press releases on the High-level Meeting are available at the documents counter.

Also, tomorrow afternoon, General Assembly President Julian Hunte will talk to you in this room at 1:45 p.m. to present his assessment of the two-day meeting.

**Afghanistan

Turning to Afghanistan, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime today launched its Afghanistan Opium Survey for 2003, which confirms that Afghanistan is the world’s leading opium producer, responsible for about three-quarters of the world’s opium output.  This year, the survey says, the area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 8 per cent, while opium production has increased by 6 per cent.

Antonio Maria Costa, the Office’s Executive Director, who launched the report in Moscow today, said Afghanistan “is clearly at a crossroads:  either major surgical drug-control measures are taken now, or the drug cancer in Afghanistan will keep spreading”, and lead to greater corruption, violence and terrorism.

The survey was the first one to be produced jointly by the Office on Drugs and Crime and the Afghan Government, and Costa praised the Government’s ban on opium cultivation and trafficking, as well as the new drug control law.  But he warned that the low-risk, high-profit opium economy can give birth to crime cartels that undermine President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law.

We have a press release with more details on the key findings.

**Democratic Republic of the Congo

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today denounced the obstacles it has encountered in recent weeks as its military observers try to verify information regarding the alleged presence of Rwandan troops on Congolese territory.  UN observers have been denied access to the Rwangabo military camp and were refused permission to speak to soldiers in Katale.

The UN Mission says that such practices may lead people to consider that allegations about Rwandan troops are not without foundation.

The Mission will proceed with its verification, and reiterates its suggestion for joint verification teams to be put in place for the sake of impartiality and transparency.

**Liberia

And on Liberia, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that, while humanitarian agencies are still negotiating free access to all parts of Liberia, they continue to distribute aid as and where they can outside the capital of Monrovia.

Last week, humanitarian workers assessed that malnutrition cases were present among refugees and displaced persons sheltered in one camp, some 50 kilometres from Liberia’s border with Côte d’Ivoire.  In response, the World Food Programme provided 8 metric tons of food commodities for distribution to more than 1,800 people at the camp.

As part of their “Back to School” programme, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has, as of today, distributed 943 School-in-a-Box kits, containing enough school supplies for roughly 75,000 children.  And as soon as security conditions permit, these School-in-a-Box kits containing materials for some 10,000 children will be delivered to yet another county.

**Sierra Leone Special Court

In neighbouring Sierra Leone, the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone will sit for the first time in Freetown, starting this Friday and lasting until next Thursday, 6 November.  Judges will consider defence motions presented by counsel for five indictees, including former Liberian President Charles Taylor, as well as four others.  You can read more about that in their press release.

**Cameroon-Nigeria

The Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission, a mechanism established by the Secretary-General to propose peaceful solutions to the border dispute between those two countries, will meet for the sixth time today and tomorrow in Abuja, Nigeria, under the chairmanship of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for West Africa, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah.

During this session, the Commission, which brings together delegations from both countries, will discuss the first phase of the withdrawal process from the Lake Chad area, which is planned to take place by the end of December.

We have a press release upstairs with more information.

**DSG

And Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette is scheduled to be meeting now with the Peace and Security Funders Group, which brings together many civil society leaders who have helped to bring the global public’s urgent concerns to the United Nations, and take back to the public their sense of what the United Nations is doing to address them.

She told the group that the central challenge is to ensure that we have all the rules, instruments and institutions to deal with the “hard” threats like war and terrorism, and “soft” threats like poverty and AIDS alike.  We have copies of her remarks upstairs.

**UNICEF/Germany

Also upstairs is a press release on the publication of a book sponsored by UNICEF/Germany on the extensive child prostitution activities along the Czech/German border.

This is the first detailed picture of the commercial sexual exploitation of children in that region, heavily frequented by German sex tourists, according to the press release.  It shows the scale of the business and the conditions in which its victims live.

**Budget

And on the UN budget, San Marino paid some $27,000 today to become the 117th Member State to have paid its UN regular budget dues in full for this year.

**Press Conferences Tomorrow

And just a preview of the press conferences for tomorrow:  at 12:30 p.m., German Ambassador Gunter Pleuger will be here to talk to you about the Security Council’s mission to Afghanistan, which he will be leading.  That mission will be departing New York on Friday.

And we mentioned earlier in the briefing:  at 1:45 p.m., the General Assembly President’s press conference here, which I am sure Michéle will have more on.

And at 4:30 p.m., in this room, Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of the UN Development Fund for Women, will be joined by actress Jessica Lange and others, to launch UNIFEM’s web portal on women, peace and security, as well as to talk about a documentary on women and peace-building, entitled “Women on the Frontlines”, which will be screened tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. in Conference Room 4.

And that’s all I have for you today.  Yes, Edie?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Marie, two things, first, your office said last week that the Secretary-General was going to discuss Dr. Ahtisaari’s report this week.  Could you tell us if it was discussed today or when it is going to be discussed, and are we going to get some kind of read out?  Also, the staff here in the UN has called for the internal reports to be made public, the two, UNSECOORD and another internal report.  Is that going to happen?

Associate Spokesman:  Well, let me start on the latter.  I have not seen that request from the Staff Union, but we can certainly look into that.  But in terms of your first question, I think you’re referring to what the Spokesman’s Office put out on Friday following the Secretary-General’s initial reaction to the Independent Panel’s report on the security of staff in Iraq.  And I think what we said at the time was that among the steps to be taken in response to that report, which of course the Secretary-General said he had taken very seriously and would be quickly trying to implement the recommendations, was that he would be discussing the report and the greater issue of staff security globally when he meets with the CEB, the Chief Executive Board, which groups the heads of UN agencies, funds and programmes.  That meeting will take place on Friday and Saturday of this week.

The Spokeswoman later said the two internal reports on UN security in Iraq would remain internal, but added that their findings were made available to the Ahtisaari panel during its own investigation into UN security and the August 19 bombing.

Question:  So that takes care of that.  My second question is that Pakistan today agreed to a series of proposals put forward by India to reduce tensions, but on condition that the United Nations monitor frontier checkpoints in Kashmir.  Is there a response from the Secretary-General to this?

Associate Spokesman:  I have no further guidance on that today, but I can check into that as well and get back to you if we have anything further to say on the recent media reports.

The Spokeswoman later said the Secretary-General has always welcomed proposals aimed at the improving of relations between India and Pakistan.  He has called for the resumption of dialogue between the two countries to resolve their differences, including Kashmir.

If there are no other questions, I will turn to Michéle.

Spokeswoman for General Assembly President

Thank you, Marie.  Good afternoon.

As you know, the High-level Dialogue for the implementation of the outcome of the International Conference on Financing for Development opened this morning with a plenary meeting and four round tables.  You have heard Mr. Ocampo talk this morning of the High-level Dialogue, and present the Secretary-General’s report.  All the meetings are open to the press.  However, because of the size of the rooms, you can only watch the round tables on a screen in conference

room 1.  I have a list of participants in the round tables if you want more details.

Four of them were held this morning.  Round table one and two were on “Regional dimensions of the implementation of the results of the International Conference on Financing for Development”.  And round tables three and four were on “Coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial and trading systems in support of development”.

There are also four round tables this afternoon: five and six on “The link between the progress in the implementation of the agreements and commitments reached at the International Conference on Financing for Development and the achievement of internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration”.

Also, there are two round tables on “The link between the progress in the implementation of the agreements and commitments reached at the International Conference on Financing for Development and the promotion of sustainable development, sustained economic growth and the eradication of poverty with a view to achieving an equitable global economic system”.

As I mentioned, I have a list of participants if you want to know who participated in these four round tables this morning and the four this afternoon.

Tomorrow, as you know, there will be a plenary that will be addressed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, World Bank President James Wolfensohn, IMF Managing Director Horst Kohler, UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero, UNDP Administrator and UN Development Group Chairman Mark Malloch Brown, as well as Enrique Iglesias, Inter-American Development Bank President.  In the press release that was issued today, you have more details on the people participating in the plenary tomorrow.  Of course, the plenary is open to the press and you don’t have to go to the over-flow room, number one.

Yesterday, the General Assembly continued the discussion on the items on reform and there will be an assessment of the debate on Friday morning by the President of the Assembly, Julian Hunte.

This is all I have for you.  Thank you.  Any questions?

Associate Spokesman:  If there are none, have a good afternoon. 

Thank you.

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