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

Following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Associate Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good afternoon.

**Sudan

We just got off the phone with the Spokesman travelling with the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk.  According to the Spokesman, they have just completed the second day of a three-day mission to west Darfur to review the status of commitments undertaken by the Sudanese Government in the Darfur Plan of Action.

Pronk and his verification team, comprising United Nations and Sudanese Government officials, as well as other representatives, visited camps housing internally displaced persons and hospitals, including therapeutic centres for children, and they also met with relief workers.  Pronk’s team also witnessed the handover of weapons by some 200 members of the People’s Defense Force affiliated with the Sudanese Government as part of the disarmament programme.  The team is expected to complete its mission tomorrow and Jan Pronk is expected to brief the Security Council on his findings next Thursday, 2 September.

**OCHA Chad Appeal

Also Sudan-related, the United Nations is now asking the international community for $166 million to address humanitarian needs in Chad until the end of the year.  It had initially appealed for $54 million in March and, so far, current contributions and pledges amount to $80 million, or almost half of the revised requirements.

The needs of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, have increased the most, with requested funds having shot up from $20 to $105 million -- that’s because the number of refugees fleeing Darfur into Chad has steadily increased from 110,000 in March, to 200,000 at the end of July.

Separately, a team from the World Health Organization will visit Chad to investigate hepatitis E cases in camps for Sudanese refugees.  The team had been supposed to leave tomorrow, but its departure has been postponed until Monday.  And we have more information on that upstairs.

**Burundi

Staying in Africa, in Burundi, the United Nations refugee agency has now moved a group of 48 Congolese refugees in Burundi away from the insecure border area between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi to Gasorwe camp in the north-east of the country, where some 8,000 Congolese refugees from an earlier influx are already sheltered.

The Gatumba transit camp, where the massacre took place on 13 August, is now closed and refugees from there are now sheltered in a school with increased security.  UNHCR and its partners continue to organize shelter, food, water, health, sanitation and other services for some 20,000 refugees now in the border area.  UNHCR is also starting an information programme on the relocation for the refugees, many of whom remain reluctant to relocate because they want to return to the DRC as soon as they feel the situation is safe.  And more information is available in a note from the United Nations refugee agency available upstairs.

**Middle East

Turning to the Middle East, in a statement issued today, thirteen United Nations institutions operating in the occupied Palestinian territory expressed concern about the hunger strike that reportedly more than 2,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees have joined.

The UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Terje Roed-Larsen, calls on the Israeli authorities to comply with its international obligations and to make every effort to find, with the prisoners, an appropriate resolution to the hunger strike.  The United Nations agencies and offices remind Israel of its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention and relevant international human rights instruments, which provide for the protection of detainees and prisoners.

The Secretary-General supports the statement and hopes that the matter will be resolved soon in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law. 

**Iraq

Yesterday afternoon, you will recall, we put out a statement on Iraq, saying that the Secretary-General welcomed the efforts by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to find a peaceful solution to the situation in Najaf, and was encouraged by reports that an agreement to halt the armed hostilities in Najaf had been reached.  The Secretary-General also voiced his great dismay at the violent incidents yesterday in Kufa and other locations in Iraq and expressed concern over the humanitarian situation created as a result of the recent hostilities.

The Secretary-General reiterates that the United Nations stands ready to assist Iraqis in the transitional political process and calls upon them to resolve their differences through peaceful means.  We have the full text of that statement upstairs, and that’s available to you.  We put it out yesterday afternoon.

*Al-Qaida

The threat from al-Qaida-related terrorism remains as great as ever, but the nature of that threat has changed, according to the first report from the monitoring team dealing with the Security Council’s sanctions on al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team contends that, despite international efforts, the threat from al-Qaida terrorism remains as real today as it has been at any time since October 1999.  What has changed is that al-Qaida’s key leadership is too preoccupied with its own immediate problems of survival to offer more than general guidance.  The team says that al-Qaida operations are not characterized by high costs.  Only the September 11 attacks required significant funding of over six figures, according to the report.

Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz of Chile, who chairs the Council’s 1267 Sanctions Committee that deals with al-Qaida and the Taliban, will brief you on Monday in this room at 11:15 in the morning.

**Security Council

There are no meetings or consultations of the Security Council scheduled for today. 

Available on the racks is a letter from the Secretary-General to the President of the Council, announcing his appointment of four experts, who are to report to the Council on the implementation of the arms embargo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  That group was given a mandate lasting until next January, in accordance with Council Resolution 1552.

**Haiti

Turning to Haiti, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, Juan Gabriel Valdés, and Force Commander, Lieutenant-General Ribeiro Pereira, launched the UN Mission’s first quick-impact project yesterday, namely the reconstruction of an elementary school in Petion-Ville.  The $14,000-project is one of four reconstruction projects being undertaken by a peacekeeping brigade from Brazil.  And we have more information in the press release upstairs.

**UNHCR/Colombia IDPs

The United Nations Refugee Agency says that a humanitarian mission visiting Colombia's Middle San Juan River region has found more than 600 previously unreported internally displaced people.  This was the first humanitarian mission to the area in north-western Colombia's Chocó province since the fighting began between left-wing and right-wing forces earlier this month.

The UNHCR says the displaced people hadn’t been registered or received assistance because of an economic blockade imposed by an irregular armed group trying to keep essential goods out of their enemies' reach.  Aid agencies are now organizing relief assistance for the group and sending a health team to the area today.

**UNICEF/Uganda Abducted Children

The United Nations Children’s Fund is urging Ugandan civilian and military authorities responsible for receiving 47 formerly abducted children to ensure their rights remain protected.  The children were repatriated today from Sudan after their abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).  UNICEF says that while the latest repatriation was encouraging, the continued targeting of children by the LRA for forced recruitment as combatants and sex slaves remains a “cause for great distress”.

Up to 12,000 children in the conflict-affected districts of northern Uganda are estimated to have been abducted by the LRA since June 2002. 

**DPRK

Turning to North Korea, the environmental situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is exacerbating that country’s existing problems.  That’s one of the findings of the United Nations Environment Programme’s first-ever assessment of North Korea’s environment.  The study found that forests have declined, rivers and city air have become more polluted, and major crop yields have fallen dramatically due to land degradation and natural disasters.  The report provides recommendations for tackling these problems, and we have copies of UNEP’s press release available upstairs.

**Evacuation Drill

And lastly, we had an evacuation of the building -- a drill -- at 10 o’clock this morning, during which more than 3,500 people present inside the Secretariat building were briefly evacuated.  The entire evacuation was completed within 29 minutes.  After that, all staff returned to the building.

And today being Friday, we have the Week Ahead available for you upstairs.

Any questions?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Do you remember when a full evacuation of the building was done last?

Associate Spokesman:  I’ll check… It was within the last 12 months, but I will get you a figure very quickly.

[The Spokesman later announced that the last full evacuation drill took place in February 2003.]

Question:  Did it have anything to do with the Republican Convention?

Associate Spokesman:  No, not at all.  This drill had been scheduled to take place, I think, two months ago, and there was too much going on inside the building at the time, so it was postponed to a later date.

But we’ve had a number of these since 9/11.

Anyone else?  Thank you very much.  Have a wonderful weekend.

* *** *