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.

**Statement of the Secretary-General’s on Death of Pope John Paul II

In a statement we released on Saturday the Secretary-General said:

“I was deeply saddened by the death of Pope John Paul II.  Quite apart from his role as a spiritual guide to more than a billion men, women and children, he was a tireless advocate of peace, a true pioneer in interfaith dialogue and a strong force for critical self-evaluation by the Church itself.

“I had the privilege to meet him several times in recent years.  I was always struck by his commitment to having the United Nations become, as he said during his address to the General Assembly in 1995, ‘a moral centre where all the nations of the world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a ‘family of nations’’.

“I offer my deepest condolences to Catholics and others around the world who were touched by his life of prayer and lifelong dedication to non-violence and peace.”

Also on Saturday, Jean Ping, the President of the General Assembly, said in a statement that the Pope’s passing is “a great loss for Poland, for the Catholic community and for humanity as a whole.”  He said that the Pope had made tremendous contributions towards upholding the values of the United Nations.

The United Nations flag is at half-mast today, in observance of the Pope’s passing.

**Lebanon

Terje Roed-Larsen, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Implementation of resolution 1559, met yesterday in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Foreign Minister Farouq al-Sharaa.  Following those meetings, Roed-Larsen said that the Syrian Foreign Minister had told him that all Syrian troops, military assets and the intelligence apparatus will have been withdrawn fully from Lebanon by 30 April.

He said the Syrian Government has agreed with him that, subject to acceptance by the Lebanese authorities, a United Nations verification team will be dispatched in order to verify the full Syrian withdrawal.  Based on his meetings in Damascus, Roed-Larsen said, there is now a common understanding between the United Nations and Syria that the implementation of resolution 1559 should proceed in a way that would best ensure the stability and unity of both Lebanon and Syria.  We have his statement upstairs.

Roed-Larsen is now in Lebanon, where he met today with President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Omar Karami, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud and Assembly Speaker Nabih Berri.  His talks with the Lebanese authorities focused on the need to hold free and fair elections as initially scheduled.

He will meet tomorrow with the Lebanese Ministers of Interior and of Defence, as well as the Army Chief, to discuss with them the mechanisms of the withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence agents.

**Statement Attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General

In reaction to these developments, we issued the following statement.

“The Secretary-General welcomes the agreement reached in Damascus yesterday between his Special Envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, and the Government of Syria regarding the full and complete withdrawal by 30 April 2005 of Syrian troops, military assets and intelligence apparatus, consistent with the requirements of Security Council resolution 1559.”

**Appointment of Secretary-General’s Envoys for September Summit

The Secretary-General is pleased to announce the appointment of their Excellencies Mr. Dermot Ahern, the Foreign Minister of Ireland; Mr. Ali Alatas, the former Foreign Minister of Indonesia; Mr. Joaquin Chissano, the former President of Mozambique; and Mr. Ernesto Zedillo, the former President of Mexico, as his Envoys for the Summit to take place in New York in September 2005.

In his report “In larger freedom:  towards development, security and human rights for all”, the Secretary-General has outlined a bold vision of steps to be taken by the international community to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.  He has placed before world leaders an agenda for action in order to move our world decisively towards important goals:  halving poverty in the next 10 years; reducing the threat of war, terrorism and deadly weapons; and advancing human dignity in every land.  He has also called for the most far-reaching reforms of the United Nations in its 60-year history.

To help him promote this comprehensive agenda, the Secretary-General has requested the good offices of these four prominent world leaders, whom he has asked to act as his Envoys in the run-up to the Summit.  All four have vast political experience, profound knowledge of international relations and are committed to the cause of the United Nations.

The Envoys will help the Secretary-General promote the bold but achievable agenda put forward in his report.  To that end, they will travel around the world and engage political leaders, civil society representatives, academics and the media.  They will present the broad package of proposals and will seek support for decisions that need to be taken by heads of State and government at their September Summit.  That Summit will review implementation of the Millennium Declaration adopted five years ago.

The Secretary-General wishes to express his deepest gratitude to their Excellencies for having agreed to take on this challenging assignment and invest their time, energy and political wisdom in assisting him in his efforts.

The Secretary-General is scheduled to meet tomorrow with three of the Envoys who will be in New York.  They are Mr. Ahern, Mr. Alatas and Mr. Zedillo.

**Sudan

The Secretary-General is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, which last week received a referral from the Security Council of the situation in Darfur, Sudan.  At that meeting, the Secretary-General is expected to transmit to the Prosecutor the sealed list of names given to him by the International Commission of Inquiry that reported to him on Darfur this year.

Moreno Ocampo then plans to speak to you and take your questions, at the Security Council stakeout, at about 11:45 a.m.

**Sudan -- Pronk

Meanwhile, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, is in Darfur today.  He visited a camp for internally displaced in El Geneaina in west Darfur and met with members of the African Union Ceasefire Team who were in the area.

Tomorrow, Pronk is expected to go to Nyala, in South Darfur, where he will continue with a round of meetings with the authorities, and the humanitarian community.

**Security Council

At 10:30 this morning, the Security Council began consultations on its programme of work for April, which was approved.

The Council President, Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya, will brief you on the programme immediately following this briefing.

Also in consultations this morning, the Security Council had on its agenda the situation in the Middle East.  Under that item, a draft resolution on an investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was introduced.

Following consultations, a formal meeting is scheduled on Côte d'Ivoire, at which the mandate of the United Nations Mission there is expected to be extended.

**Democratic Republic of Congo

Last Saturday, peacekeepers from the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo carried out an early morning cordon and search operation in the villages of Bolonzabo and Khodeza, approximately 40 kilometres south-west of Bunia, the capital of the Ituri district in the DRC’s north-east.

The Mission says these two villages were shelters for militiamen of the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Front –- also known by the French acronym FRPI -– which is the only armed group that has systematically refused to take part in the Ituri disarmament programme which ended last Friday.

The operation was carried out by a reinforced battalion –- that’s about 800 men -– coming from the Bangladeshi, South African, Pakistani and Moroccan troop contingents; and the ground forces were supported by one helicopter gunship from India.

The peacekeepers were fired upon by armed parties, and they returned fire.  There were no peacekeeper casualties sustained during the operation.  According to initial reports, some militiamen fled ahead of the peacekeepers’ arrival.  The operation falls within the United Nations Mission’s aim of acting vigorously against those armed groups in Ituri which refuse to disarm and, consequently, pose a threat to the civilian population.

**Democratic Republic of the Congo -- UNICEF

Also, while on the subject of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is calling upon all armed groups in Ituri to immediately release all children so they can begin to resume their normal lives with their families and go to school.

UNICEF confirms that more than 3,000 children associated with armed groups have disarmed since September last year and, while the number of children leaving militia groups has increased, UNICEF says it’s very concerned about the low number of girls who’ve been released.

Also, the new Force Commander of the United Nations Mission, Lieutenant-General Babacar Gaye, of Senegal, took office today.  And we have released upstairs more information on both these matters.

**United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

The Secretary-General has officially named Karen Koning AbuZayd, of the United States, as the Acting Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East or UNRWA.

AbuZayd has been the Agency’s Deputy Commissioner-General since August 2000, and will hold the post of Acting Commissioner-General until a successor to Peter Hansen is found.  Letters have been sent to all Member States requesting nominations for a new Commissioner-General.  We have a press release from UNRWA with more details.

**World Food Programme –- Tsunami

One hundred days after last December’s tsunami ripped through the Indian Ocean, the World Food Programme is back in emergency mode to get urgently needed relief to the more than 200,000 survivors of Indonesia’s latest earthquake.  But that quake has not diminished the agency’s efforts to continue providing food to tsunami survivors in other countries.  For example, WFP is currently feeding 915,000 Sri Lankans, 42,000 Maldivians, and 30,000 Somalis.

In addition, the agency’s food-for-work projects in Myanmar are well under way, with some 8,000 tsunami survivors rebuilding bridges, roads, ponds and dykes in exchange for rations of rice, cooking oil and beans.  We have a press release with more on that.

**Deputy Secretary-General

The Deputy Secretary-General yesterday delivered a keynote address at a conference convened by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Canada.  The conference focused on adapting the United Nations to the twenty-first century.  She spoke on why bold and far-reaching reforms of the kind put forward in the Secretary-General’s report are both urgent and necessary.

**Secretary-General Lecture Series

As we speak, the Secretary-General is opening a lecture series in honour of former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.  He will say that it is appropriate that the centenary of Hammarskjöld’s birth comes during a year in which we are thinking ahead on how to build a collective security system, defeat poverty and increase respect for human dignity.  He is to say that there can be no better rule of thumb for a Secretary-General than to ask, “How would Hammarskjöld have handled this?”  We have his remarks available upstairs.

**Questions from Friday

Finally, on some questions left over from Friday.  We put out most of these answers in written form to you Friday afternoon, but for the record:

On Dileep Nair, there were no further complaints brought against him, beyond those submitted by the Staff Council.  We have no comment on the documents he distributed to the press on Friday.  As I announced, we are anticipating his defence in response to the Staff Council’s allegations, and those will then be submitted to a third party.  I cannot give you the name of the third party, at his request, except to say that it is a prominent attorney who is knowledgeable about United Nations staff issues.

By the way, the interviewing process on the shortlist of candidates to replace Mr. Nair begins today.  On Thursday we mentioned that a candidate from New Zealand had not yet been contacted and, therefore, was not named, but now that candidate does not want to be considered for the position and so the shortlist stays at four names.

We were asked about Kofi Annan’s role in the earliest stages of the oil-for-food programme.  And we said, as stated in his official biography, in 1991 he led the first United Nations team to negotiate the sale of Iraqi oil to fund humanitarian goods, but as you are all well aware, those negotiations continued under others for five more years before being successfully completed in 1996.

On allegations that Kojo Annan, the Secretary-General’s son, used the official residence to throw wild parties in the Secretary-General’s absence and that on one such occasion he caused $17,000 worth of damage, I can say categorically that these are vicious rumours.

I checked with the three United Nations security staff responsible for the residence since 1997, and who keep a log of everyone entering the residence, and they told me, in writing, that Kojo Annan was never in the residence when his father wasn’t there.  Had any damage been done to the residence, the United Nations Facilities Management Division would have carried out the repairs, and the person in charge of that division says categorically, there was never any such damage done to the residence.

On the contractual status of the Independent Inquiry Committee, only its chairman, Paul Volcker, is on a dollar-a-year contract.  The Committee issued its own contracts to the other two Committee members and their staffs.

Finally, on the identities of the others on dollar-a-year contracts with the UN, the Secretary-General will make that list public.  We are finalizing the information you requested on tax, immigration and immunity benefits and expect to give all of that to you tomorrow.

Any questions?

Questions and Answers

Question:  I was just wondering how close the Secretary-General has been following the Zimbabwean elections and whether he has any view on the outcome?

Spokesman:  He has been following them very closely, and I believe that there may be a statement issued in the course of this afternoon.

Question:  Is the Secretary-General planning to attend the funeral of the Pope?

Spokesman:  At this point, yes.  You know he was supposed to be in Geneva that day for the Chief Executives Board meeting –- that’s the head of all the United Nations agencies that meet twice a year -– but we’re in the process of adjusting that programme to permit him to go to Rome on the assumption that it will be on Friday.

Question:  Do you have any further details about the Commission’s list on Darfur -- about the number and from which group and so on?

Spokesman:  No.  The Secretary-General never opened that sealed envelope and he will give the prosecutor the unopened envelope tomorrow.

Question:  This event tomorrow in the General Assembly Hall.  First of all, are you aware what the precedents are for the Secretary-General meeting the full staff?  That’s the first question.  And the second question is about the posing of questions.  I understand an e-mail went around suggesting that questions be e-mailed back to the Secretary-General’s office beforehand.  Will people who haven’t submitted their questions in advance be allowed to ask questions or not?

Spokesman:  That’s a good question.  I’m going to have to get back to you on both.  This is not the first time the Secretary-General has met with all the staff in the General Assembly Hall.  And I’ll have to get the specific occasion -- previous occasions when that has happened.

I wasn’t aware about the e-mail asking for questions.  I suspect, though, that the reason we did that, was because in the past when you have the General Assembly Hall full of staff and the Secretary-General says, are there any questions?, no one dares raise their hands.  So, I think this was a way to elicit the staff’s questions in advance, so that he could have questions to address immediately without waiting for people to raise their hands.

And as to your specific question, then, if there are people in the hall who get the courage to raise their hands who haven’t submitted an e-mail, will they be recognized?  Let me double check.  I assume the answer would be yes, but I can confirm that for you after the briefing.

[The Spokesman’s Office later announced that the floor will be open for questions when the Secretary-General meets with staff tomorrow.  Staff away from Headquarters have been invited to submit further questions by e-mail.  He also said that the Secretary-General had addressed all staff in the GA Hall at least five times since 1997.]

Question:  These five envoys appointed by the Secretary-General for public relationing in the capitals, will they be visiting all the capitals, together or separately, and who will take care of the expenses?

Spokesman:  The expenses would be borne by the United Nations, and I assume that they would be dividing up the regions of the world among them.  I doubt that they would get to 191 capitals, but I assume that they would cover their respective regions as broadly as possible.

Question:  Just a couple of follow-ups on Volcker, still trying to assimilate the information.  One of the questions I have is about the “chron” files.  These three years of “chron” files, how big are they actually in terms of shelf space?

Spokesman:  No.  I could ask Mr. Riza’s office –-

Question:  Could you ask and check the year that hadn’t been destroyed and see how big that is.  The other thing I had, would it possible for us to visit the Procurement Department to see how it’s laid out.  I would just like to be able to see where Ms. Mills-Aryee’s desk is in relation to Mr. Bahel’s desk in relation to -– you know, where everybody sat.  I’d like to get an idea.  It’s very hard for us to understand what went on without actually seeing the physical layout.

Spokesman:  You insist on trying to redo Mr. Volcker’s investigation but as a journalist, you can call any office –-

Question:  Mr. Volcker said his investigation wasn’t finished, and as a journalist, I’m continuing my own investigation.

Spokesman:  Ok, that’s fine.  As a journalist, you can ask to visit any office.  As it was described to me, and I think I described to you, there’s now, for security reasons, a buzz-in system, whereby you would go to a glass door, ring a buzzer and you’d be asked why you were there and if you say that you’ve been given an appointment to see someone, then they would let you in.  And then whether they would be willing to show you around, I can’t say.  [He later said that three years of the Chief of Staff’s chron files would take three to four filing drawers per year, each drawer being approximately 34 inches wide.]

Question:  My question is, could I get a tour, and anybody else I suppose wants a tour, by someone who knew where in 1998 all those people sat, so we can get clear idea of what was going on.

Spokesman:  1998.  Well, I will certainly ask for you.

Thank you very much.

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