PRESS BRIEFING BY THE U.N. OFFICES FOR PAKISTAN AND
AFGHANISTAN ( 09 December 2001)

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s UN briefings in Kabul (excluding questions and answers session).

** Wivina Belmonte, UN Spokesperson

Again a few important calendar plus housekeeping notes for you.

Please note that the Special Representative for the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, arrived in Rome today, to meet the former ing His Majesty Mohammed Zaher. Mr. Brahimi leaves Rome Monday for Kabul, and is expected here on Tuesday where he will hold talks with political leaders on the transfer of power which, according to the Bonn Agreement, is due to take place on 22 December 2001. Mr. Brahimi is expected back in New York at the end of next week. He will return to Kabul on 22 December for the transfer of power.

Tomorrow, we have invited 3 of 12 people who have been in Kabul for the past few days, working with UNSMA, the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan, to talk about their work and their meetings in Kabul.

These are Afghan nationals, who have been living in Peshawar, and have returned to talk about how to rebuild their country. The three people include; Mrs. Shallah Mahaindost, formerly Director of an Employment Agency in Northern Zone (Mazar), Mr. Abdurrazzaq Baig, formerly a member of the police academy and Faculty of law and Mr. Mohammed Ashraf Rasuli, who was a Supreme Court Judge, and a constitutional committee member.

They will be here to talk about who they’ve met, what they discussed and about the process of rebuilding Afghanistan. They will be speaking through interpreters.

Another note about the food distribution going on in various parts of Kabul. As you know, this is the largest distribution of aid anywhere in the country, reaching a total of 1.3 million people in Kabul. The distribution was suspended for the day today, but will
resume tomorrow.

The World Food Programme will resume handing out the 50-kilo bags of wheat at various sites through the city tomorrow. We will reach approximately 200,000 people tomorrow, with about 15-hundred metric tonnes of food.

The distribution was suspended today, so as to come up with a number of new locations for the distribution. Yesterday, at a few of the 16 locations, more people showed up than expected. To avoid overcrowding, more distribution sites were chosen today – and everything will start up again tomorrow.

Finally, I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Martin Barber, as we mentioned to you yesterday he is the head of a 7-member technical team with the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. He will restrict his comments to the technical aspects he is
concentrating on, while here in Kabul.

(There is no transcript of Mr. Barber's statement)