PRESS CONFERENCE ON 2003 ASIA AND PACIFIC ECONOMIC SURVEY

Despite the lacklustre performance of the global economy in 2002, developing economies in the Asia-Pacific region performed surprisingly well, achieving a 5 per cent growth during the year, Murari Raj Sharma, Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference today.

PRESS BRIEFING ON ‘SARS’ BY WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION OFFICIAL

The potential of the newly identified Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was still not clear, particularly whether it would become a permanent infectious disease, the Executive Director of the Communicable Diseases Cluster of the World Health Organization (WHO), David Heymann, said today at a Headquarters press briefing.

PRESS CONFERENCE BY GERMANY

The United Nations must focus intensely on providing the means and money to fulfil its 2000 pledge to reduce global abject poverty by 2015, ensure universal access to safe drinking water and provide education for all school-aged children, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Federal Minister for Economic Co-operation and Development of Germany, told correspondents this afternoon at a Headquarters press conference.

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS

A meeting scheduled for Headquarters on Monday, 14 April will bring the Economic and Social Council and the Bretton Woods institutions together in the first major public occasion to review the implementation of agreements reached at last year’s International Conference on Financing for Development,
Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said today.

PRESS CONFERENCE ON IRAQ HUMANITARIAN SITUATION

Access to vulnerable Iraqi populations, lawlessness and the need to ensure security were among the issues raised by representatives of several

non-governmental organizations at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, sponsored by the Permanent Missions of Mexico and Pakistan.

PRESS BRIEFING ON MISSION TO DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA

BY SECRETARY-GENERAL’S SPECIAL ADVISER

PRESS BRIEFING BY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME

The World Food Programme (WFP), as the largest humanitarian agency in the world, had its hands full today, its Executive Director, James Morris, told correspondents today at a Headquarters press briefing on the humanitarian situation in Iraq.

PRESS CONFERENCE BY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF SOMALIA

Welcoming the recent findings of the independent Panel of Experts on persistent violations of the arms embargo on Somalia, fragmented by more than
12 years of conflict, Somalia’s permanent representative to the United Nations said today that the experts had identified a clear pattern of destabilizing violations, particularly by Ethiopia, under which no government, including his own, could adequately function.

PRESS CONFERENCE BY AUSTRALIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER

Australia wants the United Nations to have a significant role in the
post-conflict environment in Iraq, that country’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, told correspondents this afternoon at a Headquarters press conference.

PRESS CONFERENCE ON ‘POPULATION, EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT’

Not to be able to read and write was a tremendous “unfreedom”, and removing that obstacle in a way that broadened the individual, rather than narrowed his or her outlook, was critically important to personal satisfaction and to harmonious societies, Professor Amartya Sen, 1998 Prize Winner in Economics and Master, Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, said today at a Headquarters press conference.