ACTIVITIES OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL IN ITALY, 18-19 FEBRUARY
Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Rome from Brussels in the morning of Tuesday, 18 February.
The Secretary-General had a working lunch that day with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was joined by Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini. Although they focused mainly on Iraq, they also touched on security concerns in Afghanistan, tension over the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, African issues, especially Côte d’Ivoire, and Italy’s contribution to peacekeeping and development.
At a press conference afterward, the Prime Minister said that the Secretary-General’s speech to European Union heads the previous evening was “an important contribution to Europe’s effort at unity, which was transformed into a common declaration”.
In response to a question as to how long United Nations inspections in Iraq should go on, the Secretary-General replied, “It is an issue the Council will have to tackle.” Asked if Iraq should have a deadline by which to comply, he said, “that is a judgement for the Council”. Then he added, “And I think I’ve been around Iraq long enough not to usurp their ... authority.”
The Secretary-General then met with Italy’s President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, for an in-depth discussion of the options the international community had in dealing with Iraq and the possible outcomes for the current crisis. The President shared with the Secretary-General a copy in English of a letter he had sent to Prime Minister Berlusconi just prior to the Extraordinary European Summit in Brussels on Monday, urging European unity and respect for Security Council resolutions.
The Secretary-General then went to the Vatican, where he met with the Secretary of State, His Eminence Cardinal Angelo Sodano. Also joining that meeting was His Eminence Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who had returned from Iraq a few days earlier, where he delivered a letter from the Pope to President Saddam Hussein. In this meeting, the discussion revolved around Iraq.
The Secretary-General then had an audience with His Holiness Pope John Paul II, a private one-on-one meeting that lasted for half an hour.
On Wednesday morning, the Secretary-General said in a speech that the possibility of war against Iraq should not distract governments from carrying out the United Nations wider agenda.
Speaking in Rome at the twenty-fifth anniversary meeting of the Governing Council of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), he called on Member States to sustain their determination to work worldwide for “freedom from fear, freedom from want and the protection of our planet’s resources”.
The IFAD was founded in 1977 to help raise food production as a means of combating hunger and poverty. “In time of famine”, the Secretary-General said, “AIDS is depriving countries of their capacity to resist ... That means we must combine food assistance and new approaches to farming with treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS. It means developing new agricultural techniques, appropriate to a depleted workforce” (see Press Release SG/SM/8609).
In the margins of that meeting, the Secretary-General was presented with an appeal against a war in Iraq by the Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, which was also signed by the mayors of Berlin, Brussels, London, Moscow, Paris, Vienna, Belgrade, Ljubljana and Sarajevo.
“As the winds of a new war start to blow again over the Middle East”, the letter begins, “we, the mayors of the major capital cities of Europe, aim to forcefully assert that a new conflict in Iraq can and must be avoided”. The Secretary-General accepted the letter, thanking Mayor Veltroni.
The Secretary-General then met with Jan O. Karlsson, Sweden’s Minister for Development Cooperation, with whom he discussed the link between AIDS and food production. He had a similar discussion then with the President of IFAD, Lennart Båge, on the effect of AIDS on agriculture and governance, in particular in Africa. Mr. Båge expressed his appreciation for the Secretary-General’s opening point of his speech that there are other issues for the world to be concerned about besides Iraq.
On leaving the conference facility, the Secretary-General was asked by a journalist whether the Pope invited him to go to Baghdad. “We did talk about Baghdad”, he replied, “but we didn’t talk about my visiting Baghdad.”
Asked whether he shared the Vatican view that there is more hope for peace now, he said, “I have maintained that war is not inevitable and that war is always a human catastrophe and we should exhaust all other possibilities for a peaceful settlement before war is even contemplated.”
The Secretary-General then attended a luncheon hosted by Mr. Båge.
At the airport before leaving Rome, the Secretary-General had the opportunity to meet with the President of the Lombardy Region, Roberto Formigoni, who was the first Italian official to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz of Iraq on his most recent visit to Italy.
The Secretary-General then left for Paris to attend the Africa-France Summit.