PRESS BRIEFING ON LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES CONFERENCE

Global policy-makers will confront economic isolation and severe poverty of the world's 49 poorest countries, at the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, which begins in Brussels, Belgium, next Monday, correspondents were told at a press briefing at United Nations Headquarters this afternoon.

PRESS BRIEFING TO LAUNCH BILLION MOM MARCH

The women who marched through the streets of the world raising their voices on behalf of present and future generations should translate their grief into a force for mobilizing world action against the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Jayantha Dhanapala told correspondents at a press briefing this afternoon to launch the "Billion Mom March".

PRESS BRIEFING BY CARLA DEL PONTE, PROSECUTOR

FOR INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNALS

A total of 38 people accused of committing war crimes in the former Yugoslavia remained at large, 12 of them living in Serbia and the rest in the Republika Srpska, Carla del Ponte, Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS

Afghanistan was living through the fastest growing displacement crisis in the world today, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Internally Displaced Persons told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon.

PRESS BRIEFING BY SECRETARY-GENERAL'S SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR KOSOVO

A Security Council mission is to visit Kosovo in the near future, Hans Haekkerup, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), said at a Headquarters briefing this afternoon.

PRESS CONFERENCE BY FOREIGN MINISTER OF GREECE

The world had already seen proof that the Olympic Truce was a workable idea and not simply a theoretical concept, George Papandreou, Foreign Minister of Greece, said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

PRESS CONFERENCE BY LIBERIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER

Liberia’s Foreign Minister yesterday protested the imposition of Security Council sanctions on his country, saying at a Headquarters press conference that his country had been “indicted on secret evidence”.

PRESS CONFERENCE BY DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

"At this very moment it can be said that the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is calm on all fronts", Leonard She Okitundu, Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told correspondents at a press conference this afternoon.

PRESS CONFERENCE ON THIRD UN CONFERENCE ON LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

Despite nearly 20 years of well-intentioned global conferences and meetings devoted to the development needs of poor countries, the poorest of the poor -– the least developed countries –- continued to be marginalized, correspondents were told at a Headquarters press conference this morning.

PRESS BRIEFING BY DEPUTY EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR

There were some signs of improvement in Sierra Leone, but the humanitarian situation in neighbouring Guinea and Liberia was deteriorating, the Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Carolyn McAskie, told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing today.