Secretary-General

Noon briefing of 1 February 2006

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SPOKESMAN'S NOON BRIEFING

BY STEPHANE DUJARRIC
SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK

Wednesday, 1 February 2006

SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES NON-PROLIFERATION, U.N. REFORM

  • The Secretary-General departed from London today, ending his three-country trip to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

  • Last night, he spoke at a commemoration in London of the sixtieth anniversary of the first meetings of the General Assembly and Security Council, and discussed the efforts to reform the United Nations.

  • He pointed to the urgency of strengthening the system set up by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Today’s headlines concern Iran, he noted. But when we step back from the headlines, he added, it should be clear that we cannot continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, until the non-proliferation regime is buried beneath a cascade of nuclear proliferation.

  • The 2005 World Summit’s other great failure, the Secretary-General said, was that it did not agree on enlargement of the Security Council. He said we should not underestimate the slow erosion of the UN’s authority and legitimacy that stems from the perception that it has a very narrow power-base, with just five countries calling the shots.

U.S.A. TAKES OVER SECURITY COUNCIL PRESIDENCY

  • As you know this is the first day of a new month which brings a new Presidency to the Security Council. The United States has thus taken over the rotating Presidency from Tanzania.

  • For any more information on the Council’s activities today, I would encourage you to contact the Council President’s office.

U.N. ENVOY IN SUDAN TO ATTEND ABUJA TALKS

  • The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, has returned to Khartoum after a two-day visit to Juba in southern Sudan, where he met various senior officials of the Government of South Sudan, including its President and Vice-President.

  • They discussed progress on the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, with Pronk indicating that he was not pleased with the fact that many key bodies provided for in the Agreement are not operational.

  • The UN Mission in Sudan says Pronk will leave this Friday for the talks in Abuja, where he’s expected to raise in particular the issue of the deteriorating security situation in Darfur.

THOUSANDS OF DISPLACED IN DARFUR ARE FORCED TO FLEE AGAIN

  • The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan today reports that almost 70,000 people have been displaced by recent attacks on two towns in South Darfur. The separate attacks all occurred last week, forcing already displaced persons to flee yet again, the agency said.

U.N. REPORTS SUCCESSES IN THE BATTLE AGAINST POLIO

  • The UN Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization today said that thanks to intensive efforts over the past two years, the number of countries, worldwide, with indigenous polio has dropped to an all-time low of four.

  • The agencies reported that Niger and Egypt had gone without any new cases of indigenous polio for more than a year, leaving the Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as the only remaining countries with polio endemics.

  • Egypt is polio free for the first time since before era of the pharaohs according to Egyptian authorities.

  • The agencies also said the number of cases in India and Pakistan fell by more than half last year, thanks to the polio eradication efforts led by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF.

  • They said the eradication effort would continue with a new generation of vaccines targeted at two surviving strains of the virus; and that costly, large-scale immunizations are still necessary in many countries to stop recently imported cases.

DAG HAMMARSKJOLD LECTURE SERIES CONCLUDES TOMORROW

  • The Dag Hammarskjöld Library and the Department of Public Information will hold tomorrow the fifth and final event of the Lectures and Conversations Series to conclude the year-long commemoration of the centenary of the birth of former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.

  • Titled “The International Civil Servant: Then and Now, Theory and Practice,” the Secretary-General is expected to open the event. Shashi Tharoor, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information will interview Sir Brian Urquhart, a former UN Under-Secretary-General, and Jan Eliasson, President of the sixtieth session of the General Assembly.

  • The event will be held between 12:15 p.m. and 1:15 p.m. in Conference Room 3 here at UN Headquarters.

MISS UNIVERSE TO VISIT UNITED NATIONS TOMORROW

  • The Ambassador from Nicaragua, Eduardo Sevilla, has asked me to inform you that he is hosting a luncheon for the current Miss Universe here in the building tomorrow, to help her in her work with victims of HIV/AIDS. The ambassador said he will introduce Miss Universe, Natalie Glebova, to ranking officials of UNICEF, UNAIDS and other concerned agencies. He has also invited some 16 ambassadors to the luncheon. Media Liaison is arranging for a pool photo op for approximately 1:15 p.m.

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS

U.N. CONDEMNS ABDUCTION OF AID WORKERS: The Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka today issued a statement deploring the reported abduction of 10 humanitarian aid workers employed by the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation, an aid organisation registered with the Government of Sri Lanka, and calling for their immediate release. “These are humanitarian aid workers who devote their professional lives to serving those in need. Therefore, they have the right to respect and protection from harm,” the statement said

U.N. ACTS PROMPTLY TO ADDRESS ALLEGATIONS: Asked whether the Secretary-General believed that due process has been followed in the treatment of UN staff during the review of procurement practices and concurrent investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the Spokesman said that the Secretary-General feels that due process has been met. The Secretary-General’s view, he said, is that one of the lessons of oil-for-food is that the United Nations must act promptly to address allegations, while providing due process.

U.N. FOCUSES ATTENTION ON HUNGER IN AFRICA: Asked what the United Nations is doing to deal with the threat of famine in East and Central Africa, the Spokesman said that the UN system, notably the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization, have been trying to bring concerns about the situation there to the attention of the public worldwide.