HEADQUARTERS PRESS BRIEFING BY PRESIDENT OF SECURITY COUNCIL

The Security Council wanted the business of peacekeeping to proceed without interruption and would make every effort to avoid problems like that affecting the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH), Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom, told correspondents this afternoon.

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNAIDS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

The bad news was that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was still at the early stage of its expansion and the good news was that efforts to stem it were not business as usual, Dr. Peter Piot, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, said today upon the release of a new report on the issue.

PRESS BRIEFING BY SECRETARY-GENERAL’S SPECIAL ADVISER

ON MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT

Some 60 per cent of the people displaced in the conflict between the Russian Federation and insurgents in its constituent republic of Chechnya were children, Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, said at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon.

HEADQUARTERS PRESS BRIEFING BY PRESIDENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL

The President of the Economic and Social Council, Ivan Simonovic, briefing correspondents at Headquarters today, said that the message of the High-level Council segment should centre on building on the achievements of Monterrey and making Johannesburg a success.

WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME PRESS CONFERENCE LAUNCHING EMERGENCY APPEAL

FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today launched a massive appeal to provide emergency food relief to six countries in southern Africa, where some 12.8 million people are threatened with starvation over the next nine months.

PRESS CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT SPONSORED BY CANADA

The entire global legal environment will be different at midnight on Monday 1 July when the Rome Statute goes into force, a representative of the NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court said this morning at a Headquarters press conference sponsored by Canada’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

PRESS BRIEFING BY DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS

In an inauspicious start to the new millennium, the turnaround in the world economy, following a precipitous decline in growth in 2001, was not expected to be either rapid or synchronized in 2002, Ian C. Kinniburgh, Director of the Development Policy Analysis Division in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told correspondents this morning.

PRESS BRIEFING BY DIRECTOR, UN POPULATION DIVISION

Enormous behavioural change in the reproductive sexual practices of men and women was needed to deal with the increasing consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Director of the United Nations Population Division told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing this morning.

HEADQUARTERS PRESS CONFERENCE BY FOREIGN MINISTER OF SYRIA

Syria hoped that United States President George W. Bush’s delay in announcing his initiative for the Middle East would turn out to be in the interest of a just and comprehensive peace in the region and not vice versa, the Syrian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister told correspondents at a wide-ranging Headquarters press conference today.