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

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

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

**Introduction

Good afternoon.  Please close the doors.  I hope you all enjoy our modern art exhibit of empty easels, which I’m sure will be filled shortly.  If you’d all please turn off your cell phones, that would be great.  My guest today at the briefing at noon will be Shashi Tharoor, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, and he will join us to unveil the New York City advertising campaign for the 2005 Summit.

Also, after I’m done with the briefing I’ll introduce Pragati Pascale, who will be the spokesperson for the incoming President of the General Assembly, Jan Eliasson.

**Secretary-General in London

Turning to the Secretary-General, he is in London today, where he told the Replenishment Meeting of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria that the pledges to be made at the meeting will go a long way to ensuring the Fund’s long-term sustainability.  He added that they will help to provide hope that we can make major progress in reversing the spread of AIDS and other infectious diseases.  The Secretary-General added that "it is not enough to raise money; it is equally important to ensure that the money is made to work for the people who need it most", which in turn requires better coordination among donors.  We have copies of his speech upstairs.

The Secretary-General is also holding bilateral meetings with officials attending the conference, including senior officials dealing with AIDS from the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Commission.  Yesterday, he had a working lunch with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, with whom he discussed UN reform and next week's Summit in New York.  Other topics at that meeting included developments in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Zimbabwe.  The Secretary-General is expected to return to New York later today.

**Hurricane Katrina

On Hurricane Katrina, we issued on Sunday a statement to say that the US Government had accepted the United Nations’ offer of help.  The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs now reports that as a first step, the UN has mobilized three inter-agency teams to work on logistics and coordination in conjunction with the United States authorities.  At present, one five-person liaison team is based in the USAID, that’s the United States Agency for International Development, Hurricane Katrina Operations Centre in Arlington, Virginia.  Other teams will be deployed to regional coordination centres in Texas and Georgia.  Additional deployments may also occur within the next few days, given the US’s decision to establish a large inter-agency assistance hub in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a forward aid distribution centre in Kessla, near New Orleans.  And we have a press release with more information available upstairs.

** Nepal

Also over the weekend, we issued a statement on Nepal.  According to that statement, the Secretary-General took note of the appeal addressed to him by a large number of non-governmental and civil society representatives in Nepal, requesting his good offices to help find a peaceful solution to the conflict there.  The Secretary-General made known to all interested parties his availability to help in a search for a solution.  Having learned of the decision by the Communist Party of Nepal to declare a three-month ceasefire, the Secretary-General hoped that all sides would take measures that would lead to peace talks.  And copies of that are available upstairs.

**Volcker Report to Council

Turning to tomorrow’s events related to the release of the third instalment of the Volcker report, the Security Council is discussing the format of the presentation tomorrow of the report by Mr. Volcker’s Independent Inquiry into the UN “oil-for-food” programme.  As of a short while ago, the President of the Security Council has informed us that the Council will hold an open meeting at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, during which Paul Volcker will present his report.  The Secretary-General is scheduled to attend that meeting and both Mr. Volcker and the Secretary-General are expected to speak in that open meeting.  Closed consultations on the report are expected to follow.  And the Presidency of the Security Council will provide us with more details later today on tomorrow’s meetings.

**Security Council

Also on the Council this morning, they had discussions on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The Council adopted a resolution in which it called on all Congolese parties to ensure free and fair elections.  Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, it also authorized the temporary increase in strength for the UN Mission in the DRC.  The authorization covers 841 personnel, including up to five formed police units of 125 police officers each.  And after the meeting, the Council also held consultations on the latest quarterly report by the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC.

**General Assembly

Turning to the General Assembly, the President’s office advises us that the General Assembly’s different sub-groups held intensive consultations over the weekend on the draft outcome document for the summit.  The core group also met on Saturday to hear progress reports from the other groups.  The GA President, Jean Ping, will present to the core group at 4 p.m. today a revised version of the document, which reflects the current state of play and which will serve as a basis for further negotiations among Member States.  And the office of the President will make copies of that document available to you at 4 p.m., as well.

** Chernobyl

Turning to Chernobyl, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, said today that up to 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident nearly 20 years ago.  That estimate is contained in a report by more than 100 scientists, published today by the IAEA, the World Health Organization and the UN Development Programme.  The report has several specific recommendations, including focusing assistance on highly contaminated areas, and redesigning programmes to help those genuinely in need.

**Kosovo

From Kosovo, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative there, Søren Jessen-Petersen, issued a statement yesterday expressing his sadness over the announcement by President Rugova that he was suffering from lung cancer.  He also appealed to the citizens of Kosovo to stay united and to continue their efforts towards a peaceful, stable, democratic, multi-ethnic and prosperous society.  The full statement is available upstairs.

**Advisories

A couple of things to flag for you.  At 2 p.m. tomorrow in this room, the Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom is sponsoring a press conference by Plan International, which is launching a publication on the Millennium Development Goals written by children in advance of the 2005 World Summit.  At 12:45 p.m., DPI’s Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) Section will hold a press conference on the challenge of effective partnership for development, which is the theme of discussions on the first day of the three-day DPI/NGO conference, entitled “Our challenge:  voices for peace, partnerships and renewal”.

Lastly, the press conference scheduled for tomorrow at 10 a.m. on the fifteenth annual Human Development Report has now been cancelled.  The report launch in the ECOSOC Chamber will still take place as scheduled from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and that cancellation is due to the already heavy news load, as you well know.  And the launch will be open to delegates, NGOs and, of course, the press.  Embargoed copies of the report area available upstairs.

**Statement by Spokesperson for the General Assembly President

Before I take questions, I’ll ask Pragati to come up and say hello.

Pragati Pascale, General Assembly Spokesperson:  Good afternoon.  I’m honoured to be the spokesperson for the President of the sixtieth session of the General Assembly, Jan Eliasson.  It’ll be a critical session, following up on the decisions being taken at the World Summit, the high-level plenary meeting.  And I look forward to working with you all to get you the information and the access that you need to cover it.  President-elect Eliasson has told me that he intends to be very accessible to the press, and I also intend to be readily available.  I’ll be moving to the third floor office next week.  In the meantime, you can easily reach me in my office on the tenth floor at 963-6870.

We also have available today the press kit for the Summit.  This year we’ve combined the traditional kit for the General Assembly President with the background kit for the Summit.  Those are at the press documents counter.  The website for the Summit has also been launched recently.  That’s un.org/summit2005.  The URL is in the kit and you can get more up to date information there.

President Eliasson will be giving his opening press briefing on 13 September, the day the sixtieth session opens, here in 226 at 2 p.m.  We look forward to seeing you all there.

**Questions for General Assembly Spokesperson

Question:  On the website, it would be helpful to have a listing of side events to the Summit, even those not strictly at the United Nations.

GA Spokesperson:  We’re preparing a list of side events that will be posted very soon.

Question:  The more you put on there, the more helpful it will be.

GA Spokesperson:  Yes, we’ll try to list even events that won’t be held on the premises.

**Questions for the Spokesman for the Secretary-General

Question:  Who took the decision that Mr. Volcker’s report should be unveiled in the Security Council?  What kind of discussion do you foresee?  Is there a general debate on the report?

Spokesman:  This is the final substantive report from Mr. Volcker since there is a Security Council resolution backing the report and I would say he’s even working under the authority of the Council, so it’s normal that they be presented with a report, particularly since the “oil-for-food” programme was run under the Council’s authority.  And on the closed consultations afterwards, we hope to get a bit more from the Council Presidency as the day goes on as to the outcome of those discussions, if there is in fact some sort of outcome in the form of a statement or so on.

Question:  How long will it last?

Spokesman:  How long will the Council meeting last?  You’ve been here longer than I have.  You know not to put a time to that.  But the open meeting we expect will take place in the morning and then they’ll move on to consultations.

Question:  Does the Secretary-General have any response to some of the Volcker report findings that have been published pretty widely so far?

Spokesman:  No, our response will come tomorrow after the report is officially presented.

Question:  They have an open platform for 36 hours before the United Nations can respond and that makes the United Nations look a bit flat footed.

Spokesman:  I think we would want to see the whole report in its entirety before making any comment on it.

Question:  When will you get the report?

Spokesman:  As usual, we expect Mr. Volcker to come in tomorrow in the morning and present the report to the Secretary-General.

Question:  Does the Secretary-General still unequivocally intend to serve out the full remainder of his term until the end of next year?

Spokesman:  Yes.

Question:  Will we have a press conference with Mr. Volcker?

Spokesman:  My understanding, and you need to check with Mr. Volcker, is that he will hold a press conference late in the morning or early in the afternoon, but I encourage you to check with Mike Holtzman in Mr. Volcker’s office.

Question:  Will the Secretary-General be available at the stakeout?

Spokesman:  We hope to have some sort of scenario for you later on this afternoon as to what you can expect on whom and what time and where in terms of responses from the United Nations.

Question:  The Secretary-General already made comment to the BBC.

Spokesman:  His comments to the BBC are really nothing new, that he’s braced himself for criticism.  If you look at what he told your colleagues, it’s nothing much different than he said in the past.  But we would not want to comment on the report until we’ve had a chance to see the whole report, which we have not had a chance to do.

Thank you very much.  Now I’ll gladly turn the meeting over to Shashi.

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For information media • not an official record