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 Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, and Michéle Montas, Spokeswoman for the General Assembly President.

Associate Spokesperson

Good afternoon.

**Guests at Noon

Joining us in a few minutes are Michel Savini, Assistant Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and Mahmoud Solh, Director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division and Chairman of the Steering Committee of the International Rice Commission.  They are here to launch the International Year of Rice, which will be observed next year, 2004.  The two gentlemen will join me up here as soon as we’re finished with the briefing.

**Security Council

Here at Headquarters, there are no Security Council consultations or meetings scheduled for today, the last day of the United States presidency of the Council.  Starting tomorrow, Ambassador Ismael Abraão Gaspar Martins of Angola will take over as the President of the Council for the month of November.

Yesterday afternoon, the Security Council held consultations in which it received a briefing on the final report of the expert panel dealing with the exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by that panel’s Chairman, Mahmoud Kassem.

Ambassador Kassem discussed the group’s efforts to obtain satisfactory resolutions to cases in which it had previously identified companies or individuals as participating in the exploitation of the DRC’s resources, and also suggested ideas for follow-up now that the panel’s mandate has ended.

Council members received a draft presidential statement about the panel’s last report, submitted by France, which they expect to discuss further next month.  Council members also received a draft resolution on the Road Map for the Middle East, submitted by Russia, which may also be discussed further next week.

And the last Security Council-related matter is, as you know, the Security Council mission to Afghanistan led by German Ambassador Gunter Pleuger will be leaving this evening headed towards Kabul.

**Iran-IAEA

Turning to Iran now, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), today said that his Agency is making “good progress” in its intensive verification process concerning Iran’s nuclear programme.

He said that he had received last week what he was assured was a complete and accurate declaration of Iran's past nuclear activities.  IAEA inspectors are currently in Iran visiting sites, interviewing key personnel and taking samples with a view to verifying the accuracy and completeness of this declaration.

Sometime towards the end of the second week of November, Mr. ElBaradei said, he will issue a report to the Agency’s Board of Governors with the results at that time of this verification process.

In addition, he said, he has been told to expect by next week a letter from the Iranian Government accepting the terms of the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows for unannounced IAEA inspections of sites.  In his statement, which we do have upstairs, Mr. ElBaradei said, “When this happens, it will be a very positive step forward, particularly in terms of enabling us to effectively regulate all future nuclear activities in Iran.”

**Secretary-GeneralLetter to Staff

In a letter to UN staff issued earlier today, the Secretary-General said he was gravely concerned at the findings of the Independent Panel, which he had appointed to look into the safety and security of UN personnel in Iraq.  “The Panel’s report reveals serious shortcomings in our provision of security to UN staff in Iraq”, he said, adding that, accordingly, he is taking immediate action to implement the Panel’s recommendations.

First, in response to the report’s recommendation to set up a separate and independent audit and accountability procedure, the Secretary-General is appointing an independent team of experts to review the responsibilities of key individuals for the lack of preventive and mitigating actions before the attack on 19 August.

He is also reviewing the serious weaknesses that have been revealed in the management of the United Nations, with the details of a strategic reorganization of UN security management, now being worked out under the chairmanship of Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette.  Meanwhile, the entire UN system will conduct an in-depth review of all its security measures, with advice from independent experts, while additional measures are being taken to upgrade the security of missions in the field.

Finally, he said, he was keeping the situation in Iraq itself constantly under review, and, in connection with that, he said, “our small remaining team of international officials in Baghdad is being relocated temporarily for consultations with a team from Headquarters, to thoroughly review our future operations in Iraq and the security arrangements that will be required”.

The Secretary-General concluded that he deeply regretted the systematic failures that the Panel’s report had revealed and that he “will spare no effort in acting on the conclusions” of that report.  We have copies of that letter upstairs.

**Convention against Corruption

The Secretary-General this morning at UN Headquarters welcomed the General Assembly’s adoption of the UN Convention against Corruption, calling it a “remarkable achievement” that sends a clear message that the betrayal of public trust will no longer be tolerated.

He noted that the Convention introduces a comprehensive set of standards, measures and rules for States to apply to strengthen their fight against corruption, and that it makes a major breakthrough by requiring Member States to return assets obtained through corruption to the country from which they were stolen.

He urged nations to build on the momentum achieved so far to ensure that the Convention enters into force as soon as possible, by ratifying it at the earliest possible date.

Just after the briefing, at about 12:45 p.m., Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the Office on Drugs and Crime, will talk to you in this room about this Convention against Corruption.

**Cameroon-Nigeria

Now turning to the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission, chaired by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for West Africa, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, which yesterday finished its sixth session of meetings, in Abuja, Nigeria.  The Commission discussed the first phase of Nigeria’s withdrawal from the Lake Chad area, which is to take place by the end of December.  The Commission is expected to hold its next meeting in December in Yaoundé, Cameroon.  We have a press release with more details upstairs.

**Democratic Republic of Congo

And in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN mission reports that fighting broke out near the town of Tchomia, south east of Bunia, in the north-eastern part of that country.  The UN mission airdropped a company into the area and brought the situation under control.  And we have more information on that upstairs, as well.

A joint needs-assessment mission carried out recently in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by several UN agencies has found widespread humanitarian needs in South Kivu Province in the east of the country.  Some 375,000 people are affected, many of them internally displaced.  The final report of the mission will be issued next week, and we have a press release on the preliminary findings in our Office.

**Human Rights

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders, Hina Jilani, will undertake a fact-finding mission to the Republic of Turkey from 1 to 10 December, at the invitation of the Government.  She will assess the situation of human rights defenders in that country, and will represent the findings and recommendations of her visit to Turkey in a report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

And then, the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the situation in Myanmar is to visit the country at the invitation of the Government from 3 to 8 November 2003.  He will take stock of human rights developments since the previous mission in March 2003, and follow up on key issues he had previously looked at.  He shall present preliminary observations from his visit, together with an interim report from last July, at the 58^th session of the General Assembly on 12 November 2003.

**Budget

And turning to the budget, Viet Nam today paid $216,000 to become the 118th Member State to pay its regular budget dues to the United Nations for this year.

**Fun Run

And lastly, with the annual New York marathon weekend taking place here, we have the traditional International Friendship Run taking place tomorrow.

We expect more than 12,000 runners from 88 countries to take part in this year’s event.  They will assemble tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. at the UN's North Lawn.  Many runners come in their national costumes or carry their country’s flags.  At 8:30 a.m., the runners will leave the United Nations and carry their flags on a three-mile course to Central Park.  I hope the weather is nice.

**Hua

And just on a personal note from our Office, you may have noticed that our Deputy Spokeswoman, Hua Jiang, hasn’t been doing the last few briefings, and, in fact, starting today, she is taking on a new responsibility:  she will be the Director of Public Information for the UN Mission in Kosovo.  She will be heading out to Kosovo today, where she will be working with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Kosovo, Harri Holkeri.

We’re going to miss Hua and her sunny personality, but we’re hoping that this is only a “temporary relocation”, and that she’ll be back as the Deputy Spokeswoman sometime next year.  Take care, Hua!

**The Week Ahead at United Nations

And then we have our weekly feature “The Week Ahead at the United Nations”.

And that’s all I have for you, but before I turn to Michéle and our guests, any questions?  Yes, Mark?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Just on this letter, I have a couple of questions.  Are there more details at this stage on the independent team of experts, when it’s going to begin its work and who is going to head it?  And I have one other question on that.  I note that the work being done on an earlier report on the need for strategic reorganization of UN security management, the details of that work are being worked out under the chairmanship of the Deputy Secretary-General.  Now, the Deputy Secretary-General is one of the senior officials mentioned in the Ahtisaari report who basically formed part of the complete failure of management that exacerbated the outcome of the bombing.  How does the UN square that circle that someone implicated in management failures is in charge of a review of security management?

Associate Spokesperson:  Let me start with your first question, which also refers to the first item in the Secretary-General’s letter, which is the accountability procedure issue and, as you know, Ahtisaari in his report called for this procedure.  The team of experts will be an independent team of experts and I can’t go beyond that now, but they will be appointed next week.  On your second point on this report, which he refers to, just let me give you a little bit of background on that.  There was, prior to the events of 19 August, an evaluation of UN security arrangements already under way.  This was requested, as the letter says, by the General Assembly.  And this review, or this evaluation, was being conducted by the various components of the United Nations dealing with security matters and that included the Security Coordinator’s Office which, as you know, coordinates the system-wide security; the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which deals with security of peacekeeping operations; and also the security shop here headed by Mike McCann who, you know, deals with Headquarters security and, of course, security for senior officials.  And I think it also included members of the metropolitan police.

Now, this evaluation was conducted between April and August of this year.  The findings were to have been presented in August, but then the events of

19 August occurred and, as a result, Ahtisaari’s panel was given the findings of this evaluation, and what’s happened is that this evaluation will now take into account the recommendations of the Ahtisaari panel and, at the end of this process, it will be the Secretary-General who will submit the report based on all of what I have just said to the General Assembly.

Question:  But you haven’t answered the question I asked.

Associate Spokesperson:  Which is?

Question:  Which is that the person in charge of the details of looking into the strategic reorganization of your security management is also one of the officials implicated by the Ahtisaari panel in the systematic failure of management.  How does the UN justify that?

Associate Spokesperson:  The Secretary-General will be appointing an independent panel (that will be) looking into the accountability issue.  That is the first thing that he points out.  Obviously, this expert panel will be charged with the accountability issue.  That’s a separate issue.  Right now, the current system is under the responsibility of the Deputy Secretary-General so, it’s natural that this evaluation be done under her leadership.  Yes, David?

Question:  (Inaudible) ... the Secretary-General today and through tomorrow’s meetings with many of the agency heads, to what respect will the issue of what happened in Iraq and the security assessment come up in this meeting?  What sort of outcome could be expected?

Associate Spokesperson:  As you know, what David is talking about is the semi; once every six months the Secretary-General meets with all the heads of the agencies, funds and programmes throughout the UN system.  One of the items each time is staff security.  It is obviously an item this time and an important item on the agenda, and I believe it’s on the agenda for today.  The Secretary-General said today that he would be discussing security and security coordination with this group.  He attaches a great deal of importance to these discussions in light of the new phase that we have entered in which the blue flag of the United Nations and the neutrality of the Red Cross are no longer protecting us.

And this is what he flagged as his concerns as he went into this discussion on security with the entire Chief Executive Board.  As for an outcome, I mean, I’d have to look into if there is some kind of a statement or something that comes out at the end.  But it is an internal, working meeting, so, I don’t know if there is something that will be made public immediately as a result of the meeting.  They will be going to a retreat, as you know, on the weekend following this afternoon’s session.  Yes?

Question:  To follow-up.  To what extent would it have been fair to characterize the meeting as the beginning of accountability?  Which is to say that the SG within the context of this meeting can talk to his agency heads about what went wrong in Iraq and begin to address directly, one by one, individually, how that problem came and how to go beyond it.

Associate Spokesperson:  Well, the accountability procedure he outlined, I think, is in his letter when he says that he will respond to the recommendation by setting up a separate and independent audit and accountability procedure.  I think security and coordination of security throughout the system and the application of stringent security measures in light of what he calls the new phase in the security that we face is going to be the topic of discussion with the agency heads.  Yes?

Question:  A question on Iran.  Given the role played by Germany, France and the UK recently on the nuclear issue, is it the UN assessment that the US is now devolving the power to deal with that issue to the UN and to the Europeans?

Associate Spokesperson:  I don’t have any further guidance on that for now.  Yes?  [She later advised the correspondent to direct the question to the United States and also pointed out that Mohamad ElBaradei, Director-General of the IAEA who had just spoken on Iran, was at UN Headquarters.]

Question:  Marie, yesterday the Secretary-General issued a statement in which he congratulated the parties involved in the Beijing negotiating process on the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).  Does he play any role in those negotiations and does he wish to have the UN play a role in that process?

Associate Spokesperson:  I think the statement yesterday stands.  I think it speaks for itself.  I think he said everything he wanted to through that statement.

Question:  But that doesn’t say anything about his role, potential or actual.  My question is, does he wish to play a role or does he wish the UN to play a role in that process?

Associate Spokesperson:  He has not mentioned that.  If there are no other questions ... Yes, Mark?

Question:  Sorry, just one question.  As we keep on discovering about new teams of experts and reports and so forth, so, just for the record to clarify, how many reports are out there, how many panels, how many teams surrounding the question of UN security?  The way I understand it so far, there is this one identified in the letter of the team of experts set up before August; there is another under UNSECCOORD; there is one from Geneva, which it would be a help if you could help me explain what that is; and then the Staff Union identified in one of its letters a separate one from OIOS.  So, could we just have for the record, exactly what panels, what reports, what teams are out there and what the difference is between those are?

Associate Spokesperson:  Sure.  The report that I mentioned right now that the Secretary-General mentions in his letter, this is a report that has not yet been written.  The findings of the evaluation up to the point of the 19 August attack were given to the Ahtisaari panel, and the Ahtisaari panel should have reflected that.  That report will be forthcoming in the form of a report from the Secretary-General to the General Assembly.  I don’t know how many reports you refer to, but the two other reports relating to security, which the other day the Staff Union probably was referring to, I think in your question as well, was one on an initial investigation carried out immediately after 19 August.  That investigation was comprised of, I believe, included the UN Security Coordinator’s Office, a forensic expert from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, a representative of the Internal Oversight Services, and a security officer from Geneva.  That report was submitted to the Secretary-General and that report, as I announced earlier this week, was also handed over to the Ahtisaari panel, and it is reflected in that report.  The second report was a security assessment of Iraq that was initiated after the 19 August attack which was conducted by the UN Security Coordinator, and that report was also submitted to the Secretary-General and submitted to the Ahtisaari panel.  So, those are the two reports.

Question:  Well, was there one from Geneva?

Associate Spokesperson:  I just mentioned the two reports, and that one of them included a security officer from Geneva.

Question:  The same report?

Associate Spokesperson:  Yes.

Question:  Was there any separate report to that compiled by the OIOS?

Associate Spokesperson:  The OIOS was a part of the initial investigation.

Question:  Yes, but on top of that, was there a separate report by OIOS?

Associate Spokesperson:  Not that I am aware of.

Question:  None that you’re aware of?

Associate Spokesperson:  None.

Question:  Okay.

Associate Spokesperson:  Okay, we don’t have any more questions; I am going to turn to Michéle so we can have our guests soon.  Thank you, Michéle?

Spokeswoman for General Assembly President

Thank you, Marie.  Good afternoon.

The ministerial level dialogue on financing for development ended last evening.  Wrapping up the dialogue on development financing, General Assembly President Julian Hunte called on all those committed to sustainable development to act on and implement the ideas and proposals put forward in the last two days.  He summarized the discussions undertaken, highlighting the frank nature of debate and the general consensus that more needed to be accomplished on financing for development, notably with respect to recent disappointing developments in international trade and financial transfers.

The debate over these issues is certainly not over.  The President of the Republic of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, will be here in New York Monday.  The President of the General Assembly has invited him to address a special meeting of the plenary on commodities and development.  President Museveni is expected to be at the General Assembly on Monday, 3 November 2003.  The plenary meeting, which is planned, will be one hour and 15 minutes from 4:30 to 5:45 p.m.  President Museveni will give a press conference on the issue of commodities on Monday at 4 p.m. here in room S-226.

President Hunte has issued a statement.  He said he is “pleased to have President Museveni address the commodities issue, because Uganda has had particular experience in the area of commodity matters and has made known its position in these matters, including in the United Nations and the Commonwealth.  President Museveni’s address will be in line with the deliberations of the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development and should provide input for consideration of the commodities matter in the Second Committee”.

There are other meetings also on the same issues:

      There is a panel discussion on “Trade” today, 31 October 2003, following the adjournment of the 51st meeting of the Economic and Social Council at 4 p.m., in the Economic and Social Council Chamber.  The meeting will be chaired by the Chairman of the Second Committee, Mr. Chowdhury.

There are also briefings today by executive secretaries of regional commissions on the regional implementation of financing for development and of sustainable development, for delegations in the Building today.

The General Assembly is now meeting on two issues particularly.  On crime prevention and criminal justice, Marie mentioned the statement by the Secretary-General on the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention against Corruption.

The General Assembly is concluding today its discussions of a cluster of reform items.  Particular attention is focused on, as you know, the “Revitalization of the General Assembly”. You will have available in a few minutes the closing statement by President Hunte on his assessment on the debate on reform, particularly reform in the General Assembly.

I know one of the issues you are interested in is cloning.  The Sixth Committee will, on Monday afternoon, discuss cloning.  (It was later learned that the discussion on cloning has been postponed until next Thursday.)

This is all I have for you.  Thank you.

Questions and Answers

Question:  (Inaudible) ... Iraq’s accreditation?

Spokeswoman:  As far as I know, the Credentials Committee has not submitted a report to the General Assembly,yet.

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