Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General
The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s noon briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.
All right. Good afternoon.
**Italy — Earthquake
The Secretary-General this morning spoke to Sergio Mattarella, the President of the Republic of Italy.
The Secretary-General expressed his deepest condolences to the President and to the people of Italy for the loss of life and destruction caused by the earthquake that occurred yesterday morning, and which led to hundreds of victims.
The Secretary-General commended the robust and timely efforts undertaken by the Italian Government to rescue and assist those affected by the earthquake.
The Secretary-General expressed the United Nations’ solidarity with the Italian Government and the people of Italy and assured him of the readiness of the UN to provide assistance, if requested.
Our colleagues at OCHA are in close touch with the Italian authorities and continue to monitor the situation, although at this time no international assistance has been requested.
**Trip Announcement
The Secretary-General will leave New York this Saturday, for Singapore, on the first leg of a trip that will take him to Myanmar and Sri Lanka for official visits, to the People’s Republic of China for the G20 Summit, and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic for the annual ASEAN-UN Summit.
In Singapore, the Secretary-General is scheduled to meet with the Prime Minister [Lee Hsien Loong], as well as other Government officials. He will also be conferred an Honorary Doctorate by President Tony Tan Keng Yam at the National University of Singapore and will deliver the Ho Rih Hwa Leadership Lecture to students at Singapore Management University.
In the evening of that day, the Secretary-General will travel to Myanmar, where he will meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor and Foreign Minister, and hold a joint press conference with her. The Secretary-General will then attend the 21st-Century Panglong Peace Conference on 31 August.
During his visit, the Secretary-General will also meet with President [U Htin] Kyaw and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces, as well as other political and civil society leaders.
In the evening of the 31st, he will travel to Colombo in Sri Lanka, where he will meet with President [Maithripala] Sirisena, and Prime Minister [Ranil] Wickremesinghe, and other members of the Government and Parliament.
He will also deliver a keynote speech at a public event on the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 16, dedicated to the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development.
While in Sri Lanka, the Secretary-General will also visit a resettlement site in Jaffna in the North of the country, and participate in an event on the role of youth in reconciliation and coexistence in Galle, in the South of the island.
On 3 September, he will be in Hangzhou, in the People’s Republic of China, for the G20 Summit. He will participate in several working sessions around the general theme of the Summit, “Towards an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive world economy”, in support of the G20’s efforts to integrate Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development into their long-term actions and to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable global economic growth.
While in China, the Secretary-General is scheduled to give a press conference at the G20 and also we expect him to have a number of bilateral meetings with other leaders attending the Summit.
He will then travel on to Vientiane, in Laos, for the eighth ASEAN-UN Summit meeting on 7 September, and the eleventh East Asia Summit, the following day.
On the margins of those events, the Secretary-General will meet with several senior officials, including the President [Bounnhang Vorachith] and the Prime Minister [Thongloun Sisolith] of Lao People’s Democratic Republic, who are the Chairs of ASEAN 2016. [The Prime Minister of the Lao PDR is the Chairman of the ASEAN Summit.]
The Secretary-General will be back in New York late on the evening of the 8th of September.
**Kosovo
This morning, Zahir Tanin, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Kosovo, briefed the Security Council. He said that the situation in Kosovo over the past three months has been more stable than it was during the preceding reporting period but that the threat of security and political tensions remained beneath the surface.
He emphasized that, throughout all of former Yugoslavia, the immediate post-conflict generation has now reached voting age, and many are graduating from tertiary education. If stability and prosperity are to be achieved, this generation is in need of clearer direction, and better opportunities, he said. A lack of promising trades and professions, public corruption, and extremes of economic inequality all fracture the communities far more than do ethnic or religious nationalism.
**Syria
For Syria, the Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, and his Senior Adviser Jan Egeland spoke to the press earlier today in Geneva. They reiterated the need for a 48-hour ceasefire and stressed that the UN is ready to provide assistance in Aleppo as soon as we get the greenlight from all parties.
They outlined the Aleppo emergency response plan, which has three elements: first, a lifeline to eastern Aleppo, going cross-border from Turkey. Initially, we would be ready in the first 48-hour weekly pause to have two convoys of 20 trucks that would carry enough food for 80,000 people in eastern Aleppo. Second, there would be simultaneous distribution with humanitarian response in western Aleppo where the needs have been also increased dramatically. And the third element would be to have a cross-line repair of the electricity plant which is stationed in the disputed southern part of Aleppo.
And on the ground, our humanitarian colleagues report today that the second part of a two-tier inter-agency convoy is delivering life-saving humanitarian assistance, comprised of food, health, nutrition and non-food items, to about 40,000 people in Al Waer in Homs. The delivery will complete assistance for 75,000 people in the besieged neighbourhood after the first half of the convoy — which reached 35,000 people in need in Al Waer — was completed on Tuesday. This is the first full completed inter-agency cross line convoy by road to a besieged location in August. While we welcome today’s convoy, the level of access to besieged areas this month is wholly unacceptable. Much more progress is required in reaching all besieged and hard-to-reach areas considering the very, very high level of need of the population. The UN continues to call for unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to the millions of people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas throughout Syria.
**Afghanistan
The UN Mission in Afghanistan condemned last night’s attack in Kabul on the American University in Afghanistan that killed 12 people and injured more than 50, mostly students.
Pernille Kardel, the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative, said that this attack deliberately is targeting an educational facility, during evening classes for university students, [and that it] was an atrocity and those responsible must be held to account.
More information is available online.
**Yemen
The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, today called on the international community to establish an international, independent body to carry out comprehensive investigations in Yemen.
In a report mandated by the Human Rights Council and released today, the Human Rights Office has laid out a number of serious allegations of violations and abuses committed by all sides in the conflict in Yemen, highlighting in particular their impact on civilian lives, health and infrastructure.
Between March 2015 and 23 August of this year, an estimated 3,799 civilians have been killed [and] 6,711 injured as a result of the war. At least 7.6 million people, including three million women and children, are currently suffering from malnutrition and at least 3 million people have been forced to flee their homes.
The High Commissioner said that civilians in Yemen have suffered unbearably over the years from the effects of a number of simultaneous and overlapping armed conflicts, without any form of accountability and justice, while those responsible for the violations and abuses against them enjoy impunity.
Such a manifestly, protractedly unjust situation must no longer be tolerated by the international community, said the High Commissioner.
**Lebanon
From Lebanon, the Head of Mission and Force Commander for UNIFIL, Major-General Michael Beary, chaired today his first tripartite meeting between senior officials from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) in the UN position at Ras Al Naqoura.
Discussions focused on issues related to the implementation of UNIFIL’s mandate, air and ground violations, the situation along the Blue Line and its ongoing visible marking, as well as the issue of [withdrawal] of Israeli forces from northern Ghajar.
Tripartite meetings have been held regularly under the auspices of UNIFIL since the end of the 2006 conflict. They have become an essential conflict management and confidence-building mechanism between the parties.
Such tripartite meetings are the only forum where Lebanese and Israeli armed forces representatives meet.
A press release is available online.
**Burundi
And regarding Burundi, yesterday you will have seen that we put out a statement from Adama Dieng, the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, expressing his concern at inflammatory statements made by public officials that could constitute incitement to violence. He also raised concern that the youth wing of the CNDD-FDD party, continues to be associated with human rights abuses and is reported to have threatened ethnic violence. Mr. Dieng reminds the Government of Burundi of its obligation to protect its populations, regardless of their ethnicity or political affiliation, and to refrain from any action or discourse that could inflame ethnic tensions. He called on all parties to prioritize inclusive dialogue and to bring an end to the protracted crisis.
**Lake Chad Basin
Another update for you from UNICEF, which today warned of the devastating consequences of the Boko Haram insurgency on children in Lake Chad’s Basin. Years of violence by Boko Haram have led to a worsening humanitarian situation that has displaced 1.4 million children and left at least 1 million still trapped in hard-to-reach areas.
UNICEF said that humanitarian needs were outpacing the response, especially now that new areas previously unreachable in north-east Nigeria have become accessible. UNICEF has only received 13 per cent of the $308 million it needs to provide assistance to the families affected by Boko Haram violence across Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
**Colombia
And yesterday evening you will have seen that the Secretary-General warmly congratulated President Juan Manuel Santos, the FARC-EP leader Timoleón Jiménez and their negotiating teams in Havana for concluding their negotiations.
He said that an equally determined and exemplary effort will be required to implement the agreements and called upon the international community to lend its full support to Colombia at this new and critical stage of the peace process.
The United Nations will strive to continue and intensify the support it has given to peace efforts over the years through its agencies, funds and programmes, and the UN Mission in Colombia, which is mandated to verify the ceasefire and the laying down of arms.
That statement has been shared with you online.
**Outer Space
And before we conclude, I wanted to finish with a little note from outer space. The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have selected a team from the University of Nairobi to be the first to benefit from a programme called KiboCUBE.
KiboCUBE is an initiative to offer educational and research institutions from developing countries the opportunity to deploy cube satellites, otherwise known as CubeSats — every day you learn something — meaning miniaturized satellites for space research — from the Kibo module of the International Space Station.
The University of Nairobi team plans to use its KiboCUBE CubeSat to test technologies it has developed for the future launch of a larger observation satellite.
A press release if you are interested.
**Accreditation
And a bit of in-house for you — to remind you that the deadline to apply for media accreditation for the seventy-first General Assembly and high-level meeting is 9 September.
Obviously, if you have a valid accreditation you don’t need a special badge, but if you have colleagues coming from other bureaus and so forth they do need to apply before 9 September. That would be much appreciated. Information on the MALU website.
**Honour Roll
And lastly, we want to thank our friends in the Republic of Moldova for their contributions and their full payment of the budget, bringing it up to?
Correspondent: 104.
Spokesman: There you go, Matthew. You get… see, you pay attention. Go ahead.
Correspondent: I don’t accept the game, just for the record.
Spokesman: If you participate, you accept.
**Questions and Answers
Question: I wanted to ask you about Yemen. Yesterday I’d asked you about the proposal to move the Central Bank, which Oxfam… many groups have said… you said you haven’t seen it, so I’m hoping to get some response to it.
But also John Kerry, in the last hour or so, has held a press conference in Riyadh with Foreign Minister Al‑Jubeir. And they’ve said they have a new plan, and it doesn’t seem to really involve the UN or the Envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed. So I wanted to know, what is the relationship between the UN’s initiative on this and what was announced in Saudi Arabia…?
Spokesman: I don’t… first of all, unfortunately, I don’t have anything for you on the Central Bank.
But on the… on the talks, I mean, I… we have to see what exactly was said. We’ll take a look at it. From what I understand, Ismail is still having discussions with various parties. So we’ll have to see how that’s… that meshes. Obviously, both the US, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, GCC, and others have been supportive of the talks. And we hope that all parties continue to be supportive of the UN effort.
Question: And just also, still on Yemen, this… you read out Prince Zeid’s call for an investigation, but I guess I wondered, if you can, can you say… given the Secretary‑General removed the Saudi‑led Coalition from the list for the same crimes that Zeid… Mr. Zeid is talking about in a wider picture, does he… does he have a message in terms of… let’s say Saudi Arabia has… or its allies make financial threats to the UN system again or to the UN human rights architecture. What’s the relationship between the decision that was reached here by the Secretary‑General and what he believes Prince Zeid should do now? It seems similar…
Spokesman: I…
Question: It seems related.
[inaudible]
Spokesman: I’m not sure I follow you. Prince Zeid has… is… has stated clearly his report on human rights violations. The Secretary‑General fully supports the High Commissioner’s work in all his areas.
The Saudi‑led Coalition was removed temporarily. If you look at the annex, there’s an asterisk pending an ongoing… an ongoing review. I think the message from all parts of the UN is that there is a need for accountability for those crimes that have been committed against civilians.
Question: Thank you. Stéphane, you said you are waiting for green light for humanitarian pause in Aleppo. Russia said okay and Syrian [inaudible] said okay. So which party you are waiting agreement from?
Spokesman: Well, you know, I think, somewhat said, unilateral ceasefires from one group who is fighting is not sufficient for us to go through. Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov, as I understand it, are in Geneva, will be meeting in Geneva at least tomorrow. We hope something comes out of that. What we need is for all those who have access to weapons and to guns to participate in this 48‑hour pause.
We stand ready, as Mr. Egeland said today. Mr. O’Brien said earlier in this week that the… the lorries are lined up. Obviously, there needs to be a minimum level of safety for the drivers to get into the trucks and drive to where they need to deliver the aid.
Question: I have two questions, one about Palestine, one about Syria. About Palestine, the Israeli military closed yesterday its investigation into the airstrike and cleared itself of wrongdoing. They are talking about the airstrike that took place during the 2014 war in Gaza, and back then the Secretary‑General said… or described it as criminal act. So what’s your comment?
Spokesman: I’ve seen that report. To be honest with you, I mean, we… obviously, the Secretary‑General… the UN Board of Inquiry stands, and our conclusion stands. I’m waiting for some language on that. So I should have something for you shortly, hopefully before the end of the briefing.
[The Spokesman later issued the following Note to correspondents on the Israeli investigations into events in Gaza in 2014, the Spokesman had the following to say after briefing:
The Secretary-General is aware of Israeli Military Advocate General’s decision on the status of investigations into alleged crimes committed during the 2014 hostilities, which is the first such update in over 13 months. He notes the Gaza Board of Inquiry’s findings on the incident and reminds the Israeli authorities that United Nations premises are inviolable and should be places of safety, particularly in situations of armed conflict.
As we approach the second anniversary of the ceasefire, there is still a low rate of investigations opened into these serious allegations. The Secretary-General continues to spare no effort to ensure that such incidents will never be repeated and hopes that additional cases currently under review by the Israeli authorities are given the impartial and proper due process.]
And on Syria.
Question: On Syria, [inaudible] the ambassador… the American ambassador to the UN said that… sorry. I’m quoting: “The report confirms that Syria re… Syrian regime is responsible for the repeated use of chemical weapons in Syria.” Can you… [she] talks about the report that the Secretary‑General gave yesterday to the Security Council. Can you confirm this and…
Spokesman: I can’t. You know, we announced yesterday the Secretary‑General had transmitted to the report. There’s an advanced copy that’s gone to Security Council members. I can’t, at this point, talk about the substance of the report. But I think the Secretary‑General was very pleased with the work that the joint UN OPCW team has done, and he very much looks forward to the discussions that will be had in the Security Council.
There will be a public presentation of the report next week by Ms. Gamba, who led the team and, I think, also by the High Representative for Disarmament, Mr. Kim Won‑soo.
Yes.
Question: Thank you, Stéphane. I know that Kofi Annan will be heading a commission to probe the atrocities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, but during his visit to… upcoming visit to Myanmar, will the Secretary‑General also convey his own viewpoint on what is going on about the human rights situation in…
[inaudible]
Correspondent: For Myanmar Muslims.
Spokesman: Definitely. I think there’s a host of issues to be discussed with the authorities in Myanmar, development issues, human rights issues, and those will be raised. As I… as we mentioned, the Secretary‑General will have a number of public facing events and notably a press conference while he’s in Myanmar, and I think he will then be able to tell you or your colleagues there what exactly was discussed.
Question: But is he making a trip to Rakhine State?
Spokesman: No, there’s no plans for him to go to Rakhine.
Welcome back.
Question: Thank you, Stéphane. Thank you. Stéphane, this Turkish incursion into Syria and Jarabulus area and with the aim of… declared aim of targeting ISIS and the Kurdish fighters, was that coordinated by the United Nations in any way? And how does the United Nations view such an incursion?
Spokesman: I think I would refer you back to what I said yesterday on the… on the incursion, but there is no… there was no coordination with the United Nations. We are not involved in the coordination of military activities by one party or another.
Question: But do you condone such an attack?
Spokesman: As I said, I would refer you to the language I used yesterday.
Mr. Lee.
Question: Sure. Ask on South Sudan, the… the… even as Riek Machar gets this medical treatment in Khartoum, the Government of Salva Kiir has said he’s free to come back but he should abstain from politics until the next election, which they say is scheduled for 2018. Given that he was part of the Government and was the first Vice President, does the UN… what does it think of this kind of condition?
Spokesman: I think what… what we think is that all the political leaders in South Sudan should put the interests of their country first and work on bringing peace to the people of South Sudan, who have suffered so much and tremendously since not long after independence.
Question: And on… I know I’d asked you, you’d said before that there was no comment from here on… on the Libyan House of Representatives having this vote of no confidence. Since then, the… the… the… the head of the House of Representatives, Mr. Saleh, supposedly delivered a letter through Ibrahim Dabbashi to the Secretary‑General saying, don’t work with the Government of National Accord or we’ll sue you in the International Court of Justice. Has this been received?
Spokesman: I’m not aware of the letter. Obviously, you know, our interlocutors here in New York are the Permanent Missions and those who have valid credentials and that will continue to be the case.
Question: And the Western Sahara letter, did you… can you…
Spokesman: No, still no.
Question: And one last thing.
Spokesman: Sure.
Question: I appreciate it. And I… I’ll do this as… I just want to know, I saw an article that Mr. Chatterjee was named the UN representative in Kenya. So I wanted to know, what’s the process for the naming of a resident representative? And given this he’s the son‑in‑law of the Secretary‑General, was there any recusal made? I’m not saying he’s not qualified. I’m not saying he’s not a long-time official. I’m just wondering what is the process…
[inaudible]
… for someone being named…
Spokesman: The regular process was used. The fact that he is, indeed, the son‑in‑law of the Secretary‑General, I think, does not take away anything from his very strong service over the years…
Question: Sure.
Spokesman: … to the UN.
Correspondent: No, I’m asking about the process.
Spokesman: Thank you.