United Nations Daily Highlights, 02-06-04

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

OF THE NOON BRIEFING

BY

MARIE OKABE

ASSOCIATE SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL

OF THE UNITED NATIONS

UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK

Tuesday, June 4, 2002

ANNAN PRAISES UKRAINIAN RESPONSE TO AIDS EPIDEMIC; FLIES TO MOSCOW

In Kiev this morning, Secretary-General Kofi Annan had an early meeting with former Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin, now the Russian Ambassador to Ukraine. He then went to the Ukrainian Parliament, where he congratulated the members on their recent election and praised Ukraines transition to democracy. He said change is difficult, but urged them not to get discouraged.

The Secretary-General said he was pleased by the initiatives taken by the nations leadership to deal aggressively with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and by the active role being played by young Ukrainians, who are the most affected by it.

He also pledged to continue to pressure the international community to meet its commitment in the effort to help Ukraine overcome the results of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

The Secretary-General then delivered a speech before the full Parliament, saying what a great pleasure it was to see first-hand how Ukraine was being transformed. For half a century, he went on, the great project of European cooperation had encompassed only part of the continent. That is like an orchestra playing with brass but no strings, he said. With the end of the Cold War, that had now changed, and Ukraine has been part of that liberation.

ANNAN BEGINS VISIT TO MOSCOW

The Secretary-General then flew to Moscow, where he met with members of the Federation Council, which is the upper House of the Russian Parliament, and its newly elected Speaker, Sergei Mironov.

In addition to reviewing a wide range of international issues, the Secretary-General raised the Georgia/Abkhazia issue. Then, on HIV/AIDS, he said that all leaders must speak up on this critical matter. The Speaker acknowledged that HIV/AIDS was an acute problem in Russia.

On his program Wednesday is a scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a working luncheon with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

SECURITY COUNCIL CONDEMNS ATTACKS ON UN OFFICIALS IN DR CONGO

The Security Council held informal consultations on the program of work for the month of June.

The provisional June program is posted on the UN Security Council website.

Members of the Council heard were given a briefing, in closed consultations, on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by Under Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno.

Afterwards, in a statement to the press, the President of the Security Council Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe of the Syrian Arab Republic said Council members condemned the recent attacks against the UN mission in the DRC by the Rally for Congolese Democracy-Goma (RCD-Goma.)

Members of the Council, Ambassador Wehbe added, demand that RDC-Goma immediately cease its harassment of UN officials.

ANNAN STRESSES NEED FOR CONFLICT PREVENTION

The Secretary-General has sent a message to the Summit Meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building in Asia.

In the message delivered by UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Danilo Turk at the meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan, the Secretary-General expressed his concern again about the worrying tension between India and Pakistan. The entire continent would be deeply affected by any new conflict or instability, he said.

He also said that the aim of conflict prevention must be not merely to postpone violence for a few weeks or months, but to build the foundations of sustainable peace.

KEY PHASE OF AFGHAN LOYA JIRGA SELECTION PROCESS NEARING END

The UN Mission In Afghanistan (UNAMA) announced that 761 delegates have been elected so far in phase II of Loya Jirga elections, 20 of them are women. The entire selection process is expected to be completed by Thursday.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has put the latest figure of returned refugees at 870,000. UNHCR says that the newest asylum country to see its Afghans start to leave is Kyrgyzstan, where 33 Afghans boarded buses Tuesday for a two-day trip home that will take them through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan shelters some 2,000 Afghan refugees, of whom about 100 so far have said that they're ready to go home.

DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL ARRIVES IN BALI

Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette arrived in Bali this morning.

She will attend the opening of the Ministerial segment of the Preparatory Committee meeting for the UN World Summit for Sustainable Development, which is due to begin Wednesday morning.

In her address to the Fourth Session of the Preparatory Committee, the Deputy Secretary-General will outline the main issues that will be dealt with at the World Summit of Sustainable Development and the critical work that needs to be done at the Bali meeting.

The Deputy Secretary-General is later on scheduled to meet with representatives of Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, and some other non-governmental organizations. The Deputy Secretary-General is also expected to attend an event to observe World Environment Day, where she will deliver the message of the Secretary-General.|

The Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Emil Salim, today expressed optimism that the implementation plan would be finalized by the end of the meeting on Friday. Salim said that progress had been made in the area of time-bound targets for the implementation of the Summit outcome and that areas on which agreement had not yet been reached were being cleaned up. Agreement has also been reached on issues dealing with health, small island states and Africa.

UN TO LAUNCH ENVIRONMENTAL STUDY OF PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) today announced that its Executive Director Klaus Toepfer will meet with Israeli and Palestinian environment ministers late June/early July to launch an environmental study of the Palestinian territories by UNEP experts.

Toepfer has been invited to meet with Israeli Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi and Palestinian Environment Minister Yousef Yousef Abu Safieh. He will also consult with a range of environmental experts.

The study will outline the state of the environment and identify major areas of environmental damage requiring urgent attention.

It will be based on interviews with officials and experts and a review of existing data. If necessary, the study will be followed up by field visits aimed at generating proposals on how to improve environmental conditions.

The decision to assess the environmental situation in the Palestinian Territories was taken unanimously in February 2002 by the UNEP governing Council at its Seventh Special Session.

THOUSANDS FLEEING INSTABILITY IN LIBERIA

Fighting and general instability in Liberia are driving thousands of people into exile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports. The overall camp population of Liberian refugees in Sierra Leone has now topped the 20,000 mark. Thousands have also fled into Guinea, bringing to 13,000 the number of Liberians who have fled to that West African country.

UNHCR, in its briefing in Geneva today, also reported that it is still pressing for Kenyan government authorization to either move Somali refugees in a volatile border area to a more secure location or to existing refugee camps.

NEW FIGURES SHOW SURGE IN IRAQI OIL EXPORTS

The figures released by the Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP) for the week ending 31 May, show a surge in Iraqi oil exports from the previous weeks low of 9 million barrels to 15.3 million barrels. The weeks exports netted an estimated 333 million dollars in revenue, at current prices and rate of exchange.

Phase 11 of the programme ended on 29 May and final figures for that phase indicate exports of almost 226 million barrels of oil for an estimated revenue of about $4.59 billion. In terms of the market share of Iraqi crude oil exports the bulk of those, about 59% went to the Americas/Caribbean market, with the Far East receiving almost 24%. Exports to the European market were down from over 27% in the previous phase to 16% in phase eleven.

A new phase of the programme, phase 12, began on 30 May, as decided by the Security Council under Resolution 1409 and it will end on 25 November.

UNICEF REPORT SAYS MILLION OF BABIES NOT REGISTERED AT BIRTH

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) released a report today that says millions of babies go unregistered at birth, denying them an official national identity. In the year 2000, an estimated 50 million babies were not registered, that is 41 percent of births in the world.

The right to be registered at birth and to acquire a name and nationality is recognized in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most universally signed of all international instruments.

TERRORISM SYMPOSIUM ENDS IN VIENNA

Today is the final day of the Symposium on Combating International Terrorism in Vienna.

This morning, there were two panel discussions. The first was on the role of international cooperation and technical assistance in implementing international conventions and protocols dealing with terrorism. The second dealt with the contribution of regional and sub-regional instruments to global action on terrorism.

The afternoon panel discussion centered on the relevance of the expertise of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP) in the areas of transnational organized crime, drug trafficking and money laundering and how this can be used in the global fight against terrorism.

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS

In response to questions regarding contacts between the Secretary-General and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Spokesman said the Secretary-General last spoke to the Egyptian President last Friday by phone. The Spokesman added that there were no plans for the Secretary-General to meet with President Mubarak while the latter was in the United States.

When asked what the role of the United Nations was in the crisis in Madagascar, the Spokesman said that the United Nations was in support of the efforts of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). [ The Spokesman later noted that the Central Organ of OAU has met, urging all parties to implement the Dakar agreement which was reached with the facilitation of the United Nations. The United Nations is trying to help to enhance the peace process and explore with the regional organizations ways to put more pressure on the conflicting parties .]

Japan today deposited its Instrument of Acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). [Subsidiary bodies of the Framework Convention on Climate Change will begin meeting Wednesday in Bonn, Germany, in preparation for the Conference of Parties to take place in New Delhi, India, in October. The meetings, which will end on 14 June, will prepare the agenda for the New Delhi meeting and concentrate on how to advance international cooperation on global warming.]

With almost one person in seven without enough food to eat, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today said that an additional $24 billion must be publicly invested in poor countries every year in order to achieve the 1996 World Food Summit objective of reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half, or to 400 million, by 2015. This goal was also reflected in the Millennium Declaration. The FAO is calling for the additional public investments in line with a new global Anti-Hunger Programme which it has launched on the eve of the World Food Summit: five years later, to be held in Rome between June 10 and 13.

In a joint report today, the FAO and World Food Programme (WFP) said approximately 515,000 people in the Southern and Central regions of Mozambique were facing severe food insecurity. Food aid totalling 70,050 tons between now and April 2003 is required, they said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) today issued a fact sheet on Botulism, a disease caused by extremely potent toxins found in soils, sediments and marine waters. The same toxins are used in a purified and diluted form for cosmetic applications as a treatment called Botox.

The UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPOUS) is scheduled to open its forty-fifth session in Vienna tomorrow and to hold consultations until 14 June, 2002. The session will examine ways and means of maintaining Outer Space for peaceful purposes.

In response to a question on the composition of the upcoming talks between United Nations and the Government of Iraq, which are to take place in Vienna on July 4th and 5th, the Spokesman said there were no further announcements to be made. Dr. Hans Blix, the Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency will be among the members of the UN delegation, the Spokesman added.

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

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