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 Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

Good afternoon.  Guess we have two groups of visitors today.  First, journalists from developing countries who are here for the United Nations Reham Al-Farra Memorial Fellowship Programme.  Welcome to you.

And we also have an annual visit from students of McAlisterCollege.  Is that right?  Visiting Journalists?  OK, a group from McAlister.  Welcome to you both.

**Statement on Indonesia

I’m going to start with a statement attributable to the Spokesman on the subject of the events in Indonesia today.

“The Secretary-General is horrified at the car bomb explosion today near the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, reportedly killing at least eight people and injuring more than a hundred others.  He extends his heartfelt condolences to the Government of Indonesia and the families of the victims of this apparent terrorist act.  The Secretary-General reiterates his condemnation of all terrorist acts.”

**Security Council

The Security Council has scheduled closed consultations on Sudan at 3:00 p.m. today.  A draft resolution on Sudan is expected to be introduced.

**Sudan

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, is back in Khartoum after his visit to Oslo earlier this week where he had a series of meetings with the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of International Development.  He discussed with the Norwegian officials the preparations for the upcoming Donor's Conference on Sudan, to be held on 27^th and 28^th of this month in Oslo.

Meanwhile, the African Union mediators’ revised version of the draft protocol on security issues did not meet the agreement of the parties to the peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria.  The talks are currently deadlocked.  The mediation called today for a plenary meeting in order to put on record the views of the parties on the revised version of the draft protocol and on the way to move forward with the peace talks.  The mediation plans to adjourn the current round of talks after listening to the parties and to report on the status of the current round of negotiations to the African Union presidency.

On the humanitarian front, the first convoy of trucks carrying food aid for the World Food Programme across the Sahara desert arrived at a refugee camp in eastern Chad on Thursday, today, ending a 2,800-kilometre journey from Libya's Mediterranean coast and opening up a new route to feed tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees.

**Secretary-General in Mexico

The Secretary-General wrapped up his working visit to Mexico City yesterday by thanking the members of Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute for the support they provided last July in training Iraq’s new electoral commissioners.

The Secretary-General was asked, at a press encounter yesterday, about the possibility that nations would take unilateral action against terrorist groups, and said that he believed in countries working together to pool their efforts and share information about terrorism.  And then he said, “We need to come up with ways and means of fighting terrorism effectively, but we also have to make sure that these approaches do not undermine the rule of law and basic civil rights of all people.”

We have the full transcript of that press encounter upstairs.

**Iraq Report

Out on the racks is the Secretary-General’s report to the Security Council on the work of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

In it the Secretary-General stresses that the people of Iraq must be continually reassured and convinced that the process is unequivocally moving towards the goal of making them the masters of their own political future.

The assistance given to the Iraqi electoral process is a key component of the United Nations current work in Iraq.  He tells Council members that the greatest challenge facing the electoral process in Iraq is the insecure environment.  This environment, he observes, could make it more difficult to create the necessary conditions to hold elections in January 2005.

As for the security of United Nations staff, which remains the overriding guiding principle of the United Nations Mission, the Secretary-General says the international staff currently in Baghdad operate at the outer limit of prudent and acceptable risk.  He also notes that discussions are currently under way with a number of Member States to provide both close personal protection details for the United Nations and a larger guard unit.

A conducive security environment is clearly linked to the performance of the United Nations mission in Iraq.  He concludes by saying that unless and until there is a significant improvement in the overall security situation, the United Nations Mission will have to continue to work both inside and outside Iraq, as circumstances permit, with a restricted presence on the ground.

**Middle East

In a statement issued in Jerusalem a short time ago, the United Nations Envoy for the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, condemned the killing of Palestinian civilians and the wounding of many more that have been taking place in the Gaza Strip for the last two days.

Roed-Larsen is particularly disturbed to hear that two children are among those killed.

The United Nations envoy calls on the Government of Israel to abide by its obligation under international humanitarian law to avoid the use of disproportionate force in densely populated areas and to protect the civilian population.

A fuller text is available upstairs.

**Ethiopia and Eritrea

The Secretary-General’s report on Ethiopia and Eritrea was posted on the Security Council web site today.

In it, the Secretary-General says that while the situation between Eritrea and Ethiopia remains far from ideal, there have been some positive developments in areas relating to the United Nations operations.

He says he remains concerned about the overall status of the peace process or, more specifically, the absence of prospects for breaking the continuing stalemate regarding the demarcation of the border between the two countries.

It is time that the more cooperative spirit demonstrated by the two parties towards the United Nations Mission in recent weeks be applied to the broader political process in order to move forward, he says.

**Afghanistan

The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan today condemned an attack that took place on Tuesday at the Faizabad office of a non-governmental organization, Focus, in which some ten NGO personnel were injured during a violent demonstration.

The Mission is reviewing the situation on the ground, but said that, based on preliminary discussions, it seems clear that the provincial authorities failed to provide security to the international organizations and to the population in general.

The United Nations Mission also expressed great concern at comments made by the Afghan Planning Minister, which contained an indictment of the work of NGOs in Afghanistan.  Mission spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva underscored today that justification of violence in general, and against NGOs in particular, is unacceptable, and he urged the Afghan Government to condemn clearly attacks against NGO personnel.

We have more details in today’s briefing notes from Kabul.

**Côte d’Ivoire

Available upstairs is a press release, in French only, on the Peace Corridors that is to be set up by the United Nations Mission in Côte d’Ivoire.

These corridors will primarily be used to facilitate contacts between people living on both sides of the line dividing areas under the control of the Government and under the rebel Forces Nouvelles.

This project will get under way next week, which has been designated as National Reconciliation Week.

**FAO - Pesticides

From the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), they are warning that unless they receive more funding by the end of the year, they won’t be able to help poor countries get rid of obsolete pesticides.

Obsolete pesticides, which contain toxic chemicals, are left over from pest control campaigns -- stockpiles have accumulated because some products have been banned for health or environmental reasons, but were never removed and disposed of.

FAO says the problem is a continuing and worsening threat to people and the environment in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

To give you an idea of the costs involved:  the clean-up of one tonne of obsolete pesticide waste costs around $3,500.  It’s estimated that Ukraine has around 19,500 tonnes of ageing chemicals from obsolete pesticides, which would bring the total cost to more than $68 million.

We have more in a FAO press release upstairs.

**UNICEF - Sri Lanka

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, says the stalled peace talks between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are a major impediment to assisting children affected by the country’s two-decade long war.

That’s one of the findings of a UNICEF report released today, which reviews progress made in the first half of this year under the “Action Plan for Children Affected by War”.

The Action Plan is the only formal agreement by both sides to address the urgent needs of children affected by war.

There’s more on that upstairs.

**Office of Internal Oversight Services

The Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) will hold a symposium entitled, “Governance, Leadership and Accountability”.  And that will take place in conference room 2 tomorrow afternoon.  This symposium, which commemorates the tenth anniversary of OIOS' establishment by the General Assembly in 1994, is open to all United Nations staff, delegates, and you, accredited correspondents. 

We have a press release with the full programme available upstairs.

**Press Conferences

And finally, a press conference following today’s noon briefing.  At 12:45 p.m., there will be a press conference in connection with the fifty-seventh annual DPI/NGO Conference entitled “Millennium Development Goals:  Civil Society Takes Action”.  The participants will be Ms. Wu Qing, Director, Cultural Development Centre for Rural Women in China, and Ms. Kavita Ramdas, President, Global Fund for Women.

That’s all I have for you.  Warren?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Fred, as you know, Secretary of State Powell today declared that the United States believes that what has been happening in Darfur constitutes genocide.  I have two questions.  The first one is, does this statement have any effect on the United Nations?  And secondly, what must now occur and who must make it occur to bring into effect the operative articles of the Genocide Convention?

Spokesman:  The text of the Secretary of State’s statement today, that I saw, did quote in its entirety Article 8 of the Genocide Convention.  I believe that this is the first time ever that any contracting party to the Genocide Convention has invoked Article 8.  Under Article 8, a contracting party can call on the competent organs of the United Nations to act. 

The Secretary of State also mentioned that, this afternoon, they would be formally introducing a draft resolution on the Sudan, thereby linking the Article 8 action to the draft resolution that will be introduced this afternoon.  Some of you might have seen that.  It’s not a public document yet, so I can’t comment on it. 

And so, we’ll now have to see the next step.  The matter is being brought to a competent organ of the United Nations -- the Security Council.  We’ll have to see what action the Council takes.

Question:  I just want to follow up on that.  Are there any other competent organs?  I have in mind the International Court of Justice -- the International Criminal Court, I mean, which would --

Spokesman:  It could be the ICJ.  Should they want a legal opinion, it could go to the International Court of Justice.  They could go directly to the Secretary-General.  The Secretariat is an organ -- a competent organ.  But let’s watch and see what action they will take.  They’ve indicated they’re going to the Security Council.

Question:  Just one last question on the same point.  Though the Secretary of State didn’t mention Article 6, am I reading it right that Article 6 would mean, in this case, that the Government of Sudan could initiate a proceeding?

Spokesman:  Yes, under the Genocide Convention, a national government may also try those charged with genocide.  

Question:  To pick up on this, why would the ICJ have to give a ruling, because it really only rules on things between States.  Why isn’t it the ICC, which has its -- [inaudible] -- investigating and prosecuting genocide, which I know is not what Secretary Powell had in mind.  But why the Convention in the ICJ instead of the ICC?

Spokesman:  It’s a competent organ, so one option of a contracting party would be -- the party could say we find that this is genocide and we would like a legal opinion.  That could be requested by the Security Council, for example.

Question:  Ok, another housekeeping issue -- I always get nervous right before the General Assembly, as do other news agencies because of the amount of activity going on simultaneously here.  One thing that had worked well in the last couple of years, and I just want to make sure it continues this year, does DPI put on staff to both scan the stuff -- though that was much slower than the documents centre sending documents people up and down the stairs for speeches.  A big reason is that the first world knows how to get its speeches to the counter:  the third world does not, which means that you have a preponderance of texts only from the P-5 and other such European countries, Canada, etc…

Spokesman: -- the other media-savvy countries.

Question:  Yes, the savvy countries with enough staff and enough press spokesmen, and people coming in from the capitals are not aware of all of this, and we always have trouble to get any of the developing [inaudible] --

Spokesman:  We’ll try our best to help you with that.  We’ve already asked for the runners to be in place to pick up the texts and bring them back up here.  We’re a bit crippled over this past year as a result of the General Assembly’s freeze on hiring support staff.  So I know a number of areas of the Secretariat are feeling the crunch now, and don’t have the staff to perform at the same level this year that they did last year. 

Additionally, this terribly high number of heads of State coming this year, for reasons we don’t quite understand.  Next year will be an anniversary year, and we would expect a summit General Assembly to take place next year, but for some reason, we have 98 heads of State and Government already signed up to attend this year’s General Assembly session.  And when you add foreign ministers or deputy prime ministers, it gets up to over 120.  That means that many more bilateral meetings around the building, that many more bilateral meetings for the Secretary-General. 

And then the other unusual thing this year is a number of summits and other special events -- the poverty meeting, organized by Brazil, the Quartet on the Middle East will be meeting.  So there are several special meetings along those lines.

Question:  When is the Quartet meeting?

Spokesman:  I don’t have a date for that.  So yes, (a), it’s going to be especially busy, (b), we’re going to be short-staffed, but (c), we’ll do our best. 

Yes, sir?

Question:  I’m a journalist from India.  Yesterday we heard the Russian Government saying that it’s not adverse to mounting pre-emptive strikes against sources of terrorism.  Before that, we had seen the United States pursuing this doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.  Both countries derive justification for this doctrine from the United Nations Charter -- of the right to self defence.  My question is how far the United Nations could go in justifying such pre-emptive strikes against sources of terrorism?

Spokesman:  Well, I can only speak for the Secretary-General, and he has, as you may know, set up a Panel of High-Level Eminent Persons to look at a number of issues on adapting the United Nations to the challenges of the new century.  And at the top, or near the top, of the agenda of that group is to take a look at this challenge of pre-emptive action, and finding a way to reconcile that with the collective security provisions, which were at the basis of the United Nations Charter when it was first drafted.  So, we’re hoping for some insightful views of this high-level group.

I read for you, at the beginning of this briefing, how the Secretary-General responded to a question in Mexico City today, specifically on the Russian announcement of yesterday.  What he’s saying is, let’s preserve the rule of law and work together.  So that’s his basic principle.  Whether this matter would come before the Security Council or not, I don’t know.  I assume that once the High-Level Panel reports that, that then would go to both the General Assembly and the Security Council.

Yes, sir?

Question:  Going back to your statement about Iraq a few moments ago, and efforts to provide security for United Nations personnel, you say they’re operating at the “outer limit” of prudent risk now.  Could you update us on what efforts there might be to recruit a protection force from among militaries and other entities?

Spokesman:  I don’t have anything fresh to give you on that.  It’s been an exhausting -- an exhaustive search -- among Member States for the security units that will be needed to provide both close protection and protection of the United Nations headquarters facility in Baghdad.  As of now, we still have no firm commitments from any MemberState.  I can’t say that there may not be some promising leads that we’re following, but we’ve got nothing sewn up yet. 

Thank you very much.

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