HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING
BY MARIE OKABE
ASSOCIATE SPOKESWOMAN FOR THE
SECRETARY-GENERAL
OF THE UNITED NATIONS
UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK
Friday, July 16, 2004
ANNAN MEETS
WITH
PANEL ON GLOBAL SECURITY THREATS
Secretary-General
Kofi Annan met with his
High-Level
Panel on Threats Challenges and Change in Baden,
Austria,
in the late afternoon.
That Panel
is going about its task of analyzing future threats and ways to respond
collectively to them, and is to report later this year on its findings.
Austria
is the last stop on the
Secretary-General’s three-week trip to Africa,
Asia
and Europe, and he will be back at work in
New York
next week.
MISSION
TO
WEST
AFRICA
The Security
Council held a
public meeting
this morning on its mission last month to West Africa.
The meeting began with a
briefing from the leader of that mission, British Ambassador Emyr Jones
Parry.
The report
on the mission – which traveled to Ghana, Cote
d’Ivoire, Liberia,
Sierra
Leone, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea – were released earlier this
week.
Thursday
afternoon, the
Security
Council issued a Presidential
Statement on Afghanistan,
in which it welcomed and supported the holding of the Presidential election
in that country on 9 October. It also took note of the decision to hold
Parliamentary elections next April.
DARFUR CRISIS
The first
meeting of the Joint Implementation Mechanism between the Government of Sudan
and the United Nations in Khartoum
ended today.
The next meeting is
expected to be held
on August
2.
[The mechanism was set up by an agreement
committing the Government of the
The
Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan, Jan
Pronk, who represented the United Nations, will be in New York next
week.
the
on Darfur
mediated
by the African Union in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
opened yesterday and are now
underway. The Secretary-General’s Special Advisor for Africa, Mohamed
Sahnoun, is participating from the UN side.
Asked when Pronk would be in
New York to brief
the Security Council, the Spokeswoman said that Pronk is currently in the Sudan
and on
his way to New York and that
there had been a request for him to brief the Security Council but no
date has yet been set.
ACCESS IN
DARFUR
REMAINS A MAJOR CHALLENGE FOR U.N. AGENCIES
Access in
West Darfur,
Sudan, continues to be
a major challenge because of insecurity and flooded roads.
The World
Food Programme (WFP) is therefore planning a first airdrop of 1,400 tons
there next week.
Meanwhile,
in Chad, torrential rains, sandstorms
and strong winds are worsening the situation for Sudanese refugees there and
hampering the relief effort. Heavy rains in the northeast have driven
refugees out of their makeshift shelters in seasonal riverbeds. The UN
Refugee Agency, UNHCR,
is now racing
to transfer them to a new camp.
In all,
more than 127,000 refugees have moved from the border to UNHCR's nine camps
in eastern Chad. Another 7,000 have made their
own way from the border to the site of Am Nabak, a spontaneous refugee
settlement that sprang up in early June. They are receiving assistance
there.
In South Darfur, the number of internally
displaced persons at a camp has more than doubled in three weeks. At the end
of last month, there were about 30,000 in the camp. Today, WFP reported the
number has risen to 70,000, with more coming each day.
OIL-FOR-FOOD PROGRAM ACCOUNTED FOR
The International
Advisory and Monitoring Board
(IAMB)
for Iraq
released the audit of the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI).
The audit, conducted by the firm of KPMG and released in Washington, D.C. Thursday, found that all known oil
proceeds, reported frozen assets, and transfers from the Oil
for Food Program have been properly and transparently accounted for in
the
Fund.
At the same time, based on a review of the KPMG reports, the
Board
believes that controls were insufficient to provide reasonable assurance
for the completeness of export sales of petroleum and petroleum products,
and whether all disbursements from the fund were made for the purposes
intended.
This audit covers the period from
May
22,
2003
to
December
31,
2003.
Another audit, to be released later this year will cover the first six
months of the year.
In answer to a question, the Spokeswoman said that the UN
representative on the IAMB would brief the Security Council in a private
meeting on Monday July
26th.
CLOSES IN BANGKOK
Peter
Piot, the Executive Director of UNAIDS,
told
the closing ceremony of the Fifteenth
International AIDS Conference in Bangkok today that it is now our
collective responsibility to make the money spent on fighting AIDS
works for people.
He warned
that one of the main lessons of the past
20
years is that, with AIDS, “we never gain time when we wait for action, when
we are indecisive, when we are divided, when we neglect rights, when we
replace science by ‘feel good’ projects.”
Among other
events related to the
Bangkok
conference was the pledge of
$50 million announced yesterday by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation to the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
ARRIVES IN
COTE
D’IVOIRE
The International
Commission of Inquiry on human rights violations in Cote d’Ivoire
arrived in that country today.
The
Commission, led by Gerard Balanda of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is set to listen to testimony
to look into the serious violations of human rights and international
humanitarian law that have taken place in Cote d’Ivoire since September 19, 2002.
It was set up in accordance with the January 2003 Linas-Marcoussis Agreement
and following the requests of President Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d'Ivoire.
Once its
work is done, it will report to High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise
Arbour, who will in turn transmit that report to the Secretary-General.
U.N.
POPULATION FUND REGRETS WITHHOLDING OF AIDS FUNDS
The United
Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, today said
it regretted the U.S.
administration’s decision not
to release $34 million appropriated by Congress for UNFPA.
The money
is urgently needed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS, prevent maternal deaths,
provide family planning and reduce recourse to abortion, UNFPA said.
“The United States’ contribution could have
saved thousands of lives,” said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UNFPA’s Executive
Director.
SIERRA
LEONE SPECIAL COURT
RETURNS FROM
LIBERIA
A
delegation from the Special Court for Sierra
Leone has returned from a trip to the Liberian capital,
The head of
the delegation,
Special Court
registrar Robin Vincent, met
with the Chairman of the National Transitional Government, Gyude Bryant, who
offered his full support in bringing former Liberian President Charles
Taylor to Freetown
to answer the charges against
him.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
UNHCR CONCERNED :
ABOUT DISPLACED
PEOPLE IN INGUSHETIA
UN
High Commissioner for Refugees
says
its concerned about the effects on internally displaced people from
Chechnya
residing in Ingushetia following the horrific attack which took place there
in mid-June when 90 people were reported killed.
U.N.
:
The UN
Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH,
issued a statement condemning yesterday’s violent incidents in Port-au
Prince, during which a number of Haitian police officers were killed. The
mission recalls that is everyone’s duty to work towards the creation of a
climate of stability.
“BIRD FLU” STRAIN COULD
LEAD TO DEADLY GLOBAL HUMAN PANDEMIC
:
he World
Health Organization warns
of
the possible emergence of a strain of avian
influenza, also known as “bird flu,” which could spark a potentially
deadly global human pandemic. It also calls on local authorities to take all
necessary precautions when culling infected poultry.
Meanwhile,
the Food and Agriculture Organization is urging
countries in
to cull wild birds in response to recent outbreaks in China, Thailand and Viet
Nam. “Bird
flu” killed
22 people in Thailand and Viet
Nam
earlier this year, and more than 100 million birds died or were culled
across Southern and Eastern
Asia.
WORLD
FOOD PROGRAMME TO HELP COUNTRIES AFFECTED BY FREAK WEATHER:
The
World Food Programme is gearing
up to help people affected by the effects of freak weather in Nicaragua, Peru and
Cuba.
The weather has led to severe flooding, snowstorms and drought, and the WFP will
be providing food rations.
MARITIME
LIFE THREATENED BY RISING ACIDITY IN OCEANS:
The
world’s oceans are absorbing an unprecedented amount of carbon dioxide, which
is increasing their acidity and possibly threatening the long-term survival of
many marine species, according to findings published
in a UNESCO
report
today. It adds that this in turn could disrupt marine food chains, and alter
ocean biogeochemistry in ways that are not yet understood or predictable.
THE
WEEK AHEAD AT THE UNITED NATIONS
Monday, July 19
The Security
Council has scheduled a public meeting on threats to peace and security caused
by terrorist acts.
Tuesday, July
20
The Security
Council has scheduled a public meeting on the work of regional organizations.
The Secretary-General is expected to speak.
At
At , Romanian Prime Minister Adrian
Nastase will hold a press conference.
The UN
Environment Programme's 2004 Tunza International Children's Conference on the
Environment will take place in New London,
Connecticut, from Tuesday through Friday (see
www.icc04.org).
Wednesday, July
21
The Security
Council has scheduled consultations on Cote d’Ivoire.
Thursday, July
22
Friday, July 23
The Security
Council is expected to meet with countries that contribute troops to the UN
peacekeeping missions in Lebanon
and the
The Committee
on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is set to finish its
31st session, during which it examined the reports of Angola, Argentina,
Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Latvia, Malta
and Spain.
Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General
United Nations, S-378
New York, NY 10017
Tel. 212-963-7162 -
press/media only
Fax. 212-963-7055
All other inquiries to be addressed to (212)
963-4475 or by e-mail to: inquiries@un.org
