HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SPOKESMAN'S NOON BRIEFING
BY MARIE OKABE
DEPUTY SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK
Thursday, November 17, 2005
KOFI ANNAN TO
VISIT AREAS HARDEST HIT BY SOUTH ASIAN QUAKE
Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived today in Pakistan,
where he will attend the donors’ conference for earthquake reconstruction that
is to be held on Saturday.
He met at the airport with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister,
Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri, and they
spoke to the press after that meeting, saying that much more is needed in
terms of resources to deal with the response to the earthquake.
He added that what will take place in Pakistan is
“recovery plus,” in which houses are not just rebuilt, but built in a manner
that can withstand another disaster.
The Secretary-General also met with the UN country team
working to deal with the disaster, and received a briefing from them on the
situation.
Tomorrow, he is expected to visit some of the areas that
have been hardest hit by the earthquake, including the city of Muzaffarabad.
SECRETARY-GENERAL
UNVEILS $100 LAPTOP
The
Secretary-General, together with a professor from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, on Wednesday night unveiled a
prototype of a cheap and rugged laptop for children,
at the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS)
in Tunis.
The
low-energy
green laptops, which are powered with a wind-up
crank, will let students interact with each other while learning.
Speaking
at the “One Laptop per Child” event last night, the Secretary-General
noted that the $100 laptops are to be financed through domestic
resources, donors and possibly other arrangements, at no cost to the
recipients themselves. They are to be distributed through education ministries
using established textbook channels.
Calling the laptops
an “impressive technical achievement,” the Secretary-General said that they
were able to do almost everything that larger, more expensive computers could
do.
SECURITY COUNCIL FOCUSES ON
AFGHANISTAN, ERITREA AND ETHIOPIA
The
Security Council today held consultations on Afghanistan, on which it
heard a briefing by Under-Secretary-General
Jean Marie Guéhenno on events following the September Lower House and
Provincial elections.
In the weeks since those elections, the independent
Electoral Complaints Commission has rendered its decision on some 900
complaints. The Commission ruled that, while irregularities did occur,
systematic fraud did not take place across the country and the certified
electoral results are legitimate.
Guéhenno also discussed recent security developments in
Afghanistan, including the car bomb attacks on Monday.
He also briefed the Council during closed consultations
on the situation between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
ANNAN IN TELEPHONE CONTACT WITH SYRIAN
PRESIDENT
Asked about where UN investigator Detlev
Mehlis might conduct interviews with Syrian individuals, the Spokeswoman said
she had no new information on the matter. She said that Mehlis was in the lead
on that matter.
She added that the Secretary-General had
been in phone contact with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, most recently on
Wednesday night.
UNITED NATIONS IS ‘CONCERNED’ WITH USE OF
WHITE PHOSPHORUS IN IRAQ
Asked whether the United Nations was concerned about the
reported use of white phosphorus in Falluja last year, the Spokeswoman said
that the United Nations was aware of the reports and was concerned about its
possible effects on the local civilian population.
The United Nations welcomes the decision of the
Government of Iraq to launch an immediate investigation into this matter, she
added.
BILL CLINTON TO MAKE SECOND TSUNAMI AREA
VISIT
The Special Envoy
for
Tsunami Recovery, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, will be making his
second
trip to the tsunami-hit region, in his UN capacity, later this month.
He will be in Sri
Lanka on 29 November and Aceh on 30 November. He will then head to Brussels on
1 December to brief the European Commission on ongoing needs.
UNITED NATIONS AND TOUR FIRM TO PROMOTE
WORLD HERITAGE SITES
The UN
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today
announced the launching of a new travel initiative to promote sustainable
tourism and awareness of World Heritage Sites.
The new body, called the World Heritage Alliance, was
created by the travel company Expedia, and the United Nations Foundation, with
the cooperation of UNESCO.
It is designed to encourage travelers to help in nature
conservation, historic preservation and poverty reduction through sustainable
tourism.
Expedia is already running trips to 11 of the 812
World Heritage Sites, with the profits gong to heritage site funds. These
include visits to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Machu Piccuhu in Peru, and Central
City in the Czech Republic.
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES’ GREENHOUSE GAS
EMISSIONS DOWN
In a new publication linked to the
UN Climate Change Convention, the UN Climate Change
secretariat
confirms that developed countries, taken as a group, have achieved sizable
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Compared to the 1990 levels, overall greenhouse gas
emissions of these countries were down 5.9% in 2003 – but the secretariat
warns that further efforts are required to sustain these reductions.
ACCESS TO
OIL-FOR-FOOD PROBE PAPERS BEING FINALIZED
The United Nations is finalizing arrangements for
access by Member States and others to the documentation that has been amassed
during the course of the
Independent Inquiry Committee’s work. The aim is to provide the widest
possible access to documents for duly authorized law enforcement and
regulatory agencies consistent with confidentiality agreements and other
arrangements agreed by the IIC in collecting the information.
Separately, the IIC is being
extended until at the least the end of December 2005 in order to facilitate
cooperation with any criminal investigations by national authorities seeking
to follow-up on the findings of the IIC’s final report.
When the IIC is formally
closed, the United Nations will ensure that arrangements are put in place to
manage future access to the IIC’s files and ensure full cooperation with new
or ongoing investigations by appropriate national authorities. The IIC will
not be conducting any further investigations.
On funding, this is under
discussion but likely to be financed in the same way as earlier phases of the
IIC. The expected costs would be much smaller than during the investigative
phase, as it requires a smaller team to facilitate access to the information.
Asked for further details about who will control the
documents currently possessed by the IIC, the Spokeswoman said that is a
matter which is currently being discussed by the
Office for Legal Affairs, the Iraqi authorities and the Volcker Committee.
A final decision has not yet been reached.
Asked whether it was fair to say that funding for the IIC
would come out of oil-for-food accounts, the Spokeswoman noted that it was
expected that its funding would be along the lines of previous arrangements
U.N. COUNTER TERRORISM CHIEF FULLY
VETTED
Asked whether the United Nations has investigated if
Javier Ruperez, the Executive Director of the
Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, was the same person as a “Javier
Roberts” referred to in the October report of the Independent Inquiry
Committee (IIC), the Spokeswoman noted that Ruperez had been nominated by the
Secretary-General and approved by the Security Council in a candidacy which
was thoroughly vetted.
She said that Ruperez had filled out his financial
disclosure forms, on which nothing irregular was found. He said that he was
willing to disclose any further financial information that is deemed
necessary.
Ruperez also said that he had taken legal action against
papers in Spain that had linked him to “Javier Roberts” and claimed to have
won retractions from them.
Ruperez’s name, Okabe said, did not come up in the IIC
report. There is no reason, she said, for the United Nations to believe that
Ruperez is the same person as the one mentioned in the report.
OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS
LATEST REPORT ON PLANS FOR
REFURBISHING UN IS PUBLISHED: The
latest report by the Secretary-General to the General Assembly on the
Capital Master Plan to refurbish UN headquarters in New York is out as a
document today.
AFRICAN ECONOMIC ENVOY WAS DEVELOPMENT EXPERT: Asked
about the appointment of the head of the Economic Commission for Africa,
Abdoulieye Janneh, the Spokeswoman said that the decision to approve his
promotion was taken last July by the Under-Secretaries-General for Legal
Affairs, Political Affairs and Peacekeeping Operations. She said that he was
appointed to his position on the basis of his exemplary record at the UN
Development Programme (UNDP). The Spokeswoman declined to comment on repeated
questions asked about Janneh and a Mercedes sale referred to in the September
report of the Independent Inquiry Committee.
SPOKESWOMAN SPEAKS FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL: Asked
who provides her with guidance, the Spokeswoman noted that she is the Deputy
Spokesman for the Secretary-General, and her guidance ultimately comes from the
Secretary-General.
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