HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SPOKESMAN'S NOON BRIEFING
BY STEPHANE DUJARRIC
ASSOCIATE SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK
Monday, 25 April, 2005
ANNAN LEAVES INDONESIA AND GOES TO INDIA
Secretary-General Kofi Annan completed his programme in Indonesia, and left for India today. Before leaving Jakarta, where he attended the Asian-African Summit, he held twelve bilateral meetings on the Summit’s sidelines on Saturday.
These meetings included President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Senior General Than Shwe of Myanmar, President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir of Sudan, and President Hu Jintao of China.
In response to a question at a press conference between meetings, the Secretary-General said his reform proposals for the UN covers a wide range of issues and do not give emphasis to the Security Council.
“We have also suggested that the General Assembly and Security Council should be strengthened. ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) and General Assembly should be strengthened and they should become the forum for discussing economic issues and policies of the day,” the Secretary-General said. “The members have focused on Security Council, but Security Council is only one of the proposals.”
Asked about his meeting with Gen. Than Shwe, the Secretary-General said that they had discussed the situation in Myanmar and the democratization process.
“He briefed me extensively as to how he sees things and how things are going on. I did raise the question of Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD (National League for Democracy), and the fact that it was important that all citizens are able to participate in the constitutional process in the national discussions to be able to deal freely without restrictions and to be able to organize themselves and exercise their individual and democratic rights,” the Secretary-General said.
Most of Sunday was spent taking part in the Golden Jubilee commemoration of the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung.
ANNAN SENDS TEAM TO LEBANON TO VERIFY SYRIAN WITHDRAWAL
The Secretary-General is dispatching today a team to verify whether there has been a full and complete withdrawal of all Syrian troops, military assets and the intelligence apparatus from Lebanon in keeping with Security Council resolution 1559 (2004).
The deployment is pursuant to an agreement reached between the United Nations and the Governments of Syria and Lebanon. He expects those governments to cooperate fully with the mission and provide it with the necessary support and assistance to carry out its task.
The Secretary-General has asked the mission to complete its work as soon as possible. He will present the findings of the verification team to the Security Council in a report that will supplement the information in his upcoming report on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1559 which is expected to be released on 26 April.
Asked who will lead the verification team, the Spokesman said that Brigadier-General Elhadji Mouhamadou Kandji of Senegal, currently serving as the Deputy Military Advisor in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, would do so.
The Spokesman said that other members of the team include Colonel Ian Sinclair of the UK, currently the Chief-of-Staff at the UN peacekeeping mission in Cyprus, and Commander Kari Olavi Makinen of Finland, currently working in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations’ Mission Operations Service.
Asked if there was any plan for the Secretary-General to meet Saadeddine Hariri, the son of Rafik Hariri, the Spokesman said he was not aware of any such meeting being planned.
Asked about he timing of the release of the Secretary-General’s report on Lebanon, the Spokesman said that it’s expected that Security Council members would receive the report sometime on Tuesday.
SECRETARY-GENERAL APPEALS FOR CALM IN TOGO
A statement issued on Sunday afternoon on the presidential elections in Togo, was released before incidents of violence were reported in certain parts of Lomé, Togo’s capital, after the voting had ended.
In the statement, we said that the Secretary-General welcomes the peaceful and orderly manner in which the Togolese people turned out in large numbers to cast their votes. He also appeals once again for calm and urges the parties to refer any electoral disputes to the appropriate authorities as provided for in the Electoral Code.
Asked if the Secretary-General’s statement had been issued prematurely, the Spokesman said that the statement had been issued at a point in time when violence had not yet occurred. He indicated that the Secretary-General’s statement appeals for calm.
SECURITY COUNCIL BRIEFED ON TERRORISM & WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Turning to the Security Council, it began an open meeting at 10:00 a.m. today for briefings by the chairmen of some of the Council’s subsidiary bodies.
The briefings are by the Chairmen of the Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1267 concerning Al-Qaida and the Taliban; the Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1373, concerning counter-terrorism; and the Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1540, which deals with the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
BURUNDI: TRANSITIONAL PERIOD EXTENDED UNTIL 26 AUGUST
The Regional Initiative Summit on Burundi ended in Uganda last Friday, with heads of state endorsing a further extension of Burundi’s transitional period until 26 August.
In a statement delivered to the Summit on Friday, on his behalf by his Special Representative for Burundi, Carolyn McAskie, the Secretary-General said that, thanks to the courageous efforts played by the Chairman and members of the Regional Initiative, as well as by the Facilitation, the peace process in Burundi is approaching what we hope will be its final stages, despite recurring delays.
He also called on Burundi’s leaders to take that last step towards meeting the aspirations of the Burundian people, who deserve nothing less than a democratically elected Government, committed to peace, stability and development.
U.N. PEACEKEEPERS PROVIDING SUPPORT FOR CONGOLESE TROOPS
Peacekeepers from the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic for the Congo (DRC) are providing support to troops from the national army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in an operation in the Ituri district, in the country’s north-east.
The peacekeepers were informed on Sunday that the national army troops were under attack by militia members in Kagaba, and the militia included women and children.
The UN troops are currently in Kagaba to ensure that the militia members are flushed out and the national army forces are in control there. Peacekeepers from the contingents of Pakistan, Nepal, Morocco and Bangladesh are taking part in the operation, which also involved two attack helicopters.
NEARLY 50,000 EX-COMBATANTS DISARMED IN AFGHANISTAN
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reports that, to date, nearly 50,000 Afghan Military Forces personnel have been disarmed. In addition, almost 44,000 Afghans have qualified for reintegration benefits since the Afghan Government’s New Beginnings Programme -- which is supported by the UN Mission and the UN Development Programme -- started in October 2003.
In other news, the Government of Afghanistan and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime have released a report, which confirms that opium poppy eradication was more active in the southern provinces than the northern ones, and that poppy cultivation is moving to remote and farmlands in northern Afghanistan.
CRIME CONGRESS WRAPS UP WITH ENTRY INTO FORCE OF FIREARMS PROTOCOL
The 11th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice ended today in Bangkok. During the Congress, the Firearms Control Protocol of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime entered into force, after Zambia became the fortieth nation to ratify it.
The Congress also adopted the Bangkok Declaration, in which Member States reaffirmed their readiness to improve international cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism at the multilateral, regional and bilateral levels, in areas including extradition and mutual legal assistance.
OIL-FOR-FOOD INQUIRY COMMITTEE GIVEN COMPLETE ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Asked about the level of access provided to members of the Independent Inquiry Committee (ICC) for UN documentation in relation to the oil-for-food programme, the Spokesman said that the Committee investigators had complete, unfettered and unsupervised access to all the computers in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General (EOSG).
He added that the Committee investigators also had the same level of access to all the hard-copies of the files kept in the EOSG’s central filing unit, as well as access to all of the Secretary-General’s immediate staff members – and the Secretary-General himself.
The Spokesman noted that the ICC has said that it has received full cooperation and full access to UN staff and documentation.
BIRD FLU SUCCESSFULLY CONTAINED IN D.P.R. KOREA
The recent outbreak of avian influenza in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has been successfully contained, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.
A so-called H7 strain of the bird flu virus had been detected recently on three poultry farms near the capital Pyongyang. Although this virus caused severe disease in chickens it is not directly related to the other strain of the virus circulating in other parts of Asia.
FAO has now urged the country to continue surveillance on the affected farms and elsewhere to ensure that no residual infection remains.
OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS
TAX QUESTIONS SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO STRONG: In response to questions about the tax implications of the UN employment of Maurice Strong, the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General and Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Korean Peninsula, the Spokesman said such questions should be directed to Strong.
AFRICA MALARIA DAY MARKED TODAY: Today is Africa Malaria Day 2005, and commemoration activities are focusing on forming partnerships to fight the disease – which kills nearly a million African children under five each year, more than any other single sickness. The driving force behind the day is the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, which was launched in 1998 by the World Health Organization, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme and the World Bank.
ASIA EXPERIENCING “YEAR OF SHOCKS”: Today the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific launched the 2005 Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, with the Commission’s Executive Secretary, Kim Hak-Su, saying that the region was “experiencing a year of shocks” – such as the tsunami and bird flu.
MEETING TO IMPROVE IRAQI SLUMS: Starting tomorrow, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme and two Iraqi ministries will be holding a two-day roundtable meeting on a slum upgrading strategy for Iraq. The meeting will take place in the Jordanian capital of Amman. The aim is to conclude a strategy paper on improving the living conditions of up to one million poor urban dwellers.
244 PEOPLE DEAD IN MARBURG OUTBREAK: In Angola, 244 people have now died in the outbreak of the highly contagious Marburg virus, according to the World Health Organization. In a teleconference on Saturday, experts in Angola said that the average number of cases per week has dropped from about 35 to 15. However, the experts warned that the progress could foster careless behaviour, and emphasized that the outbreak is not over. At present, the fatality rate is higher than 90%.
JACKIE CHAN SPEAKS OUT ON HIV/AIDS: At the conclusion of his first mission to Vietnam, UNICEF/UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador and movie star Jackie Chan today called for an end to discrimination towards children and families infected or affected with HIV/AIDS. Every day, between 40 and 120 people are being infected with HIV/AIDS in Vietnam.
TIMOR-LESTE AT “CRITICAL JUNCTURE,” ANNAN SAYS: In a message to the Timor-Leste and Development Partners Meeting, being held today and tomorrow in Dili, the Secretary-General stated that Timor-Leste is at a “critical juncture,” as it transitions from a peacekeeping into a peacebuilding phase. He called on the international community to assist in capacity-building efforts.
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