PI/1069

UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR DPI STRESSES ROLE OF PRINT MEDIA, IN COMMENTS TO INFORMATION COMMITTEE

The Department of Public Information (DPI) would carefully assess its publications to ensure that they fulfilled important needs in a cost-effective way, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Kensaku Hogen told the Committee on Information this morning.

Addressing calls for a cost-based, consumer-driven process, Kensaku Hogen cited the Secretary-General's emphasis on revitalizing DPI's demand-driven approach to publications, aimed at making them widely available, cost-effective, timely and marketable. The Under-Secretary-General was responding to concerns raised during the Information Committee's general exchange of views, which concluded on Friday, 8 May.

While emphasizing the role of the electronic media, he said that print remained DPI's principal and most effective means of communicating ideas and concepts worldwide. The role of authoritative, accurate and timely publications remained undiminished, and their impact on opinion and policy was crucial to the realization of the Department's mandates.

Responding to questions on the use of all six official languages of the United Nations in DPI's work, Mr. Hogen said the Department was conscious of its responsibility to reach the broadest possible audience. Lack of resources was the only reason for its inability to produced all its publications in all the official languages, he said.

Statements were then made by the representatives of Egypt and Argentina.

Also this morning, the Committee began work on the preparation of its draft report to the General Assembly. The representative of Brazil drew attention to a draft resolution which had been informally circulated by the "Group of 77" developing countries and China. He suggested that consultations be held with the aim of reaching consensus on it.

At issue in the ensuing discussion was a whether work on the draft report should be carried out by the Committee's "extended bureau" -- comprising the elected officers and representatives of regional groups -- or by an open-ended working group to be established for the purpose.

Committee on Information - 1a - Press Release PI/1069 6th Meeting (AM) 11 May 1998

The representative of the Netherlands said additional time was needed for some delegations to receive instructions from their capitals on the subject. The representative of Ghana said developing countries must have a means of openly presenting their views on the Committee's substantive work.

Following the exchange, which also included the representatives of Argentina, Indonesia (as Chairman of the Group of 77), Syria, China, Algeria, Japan, Lebanon and Cuba, the Chairman invited all interested delegations to an informal meeting to be held tomorrow morning to consider the draft resolution.

The Committee will meet again at a date to be announced in the Journal.

(page 2 follows) Committee Work Programme

The Committee on Information met this morning to hear the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information respond to questions raised in the course of its general debate.

Responses by Under-Secretary-General

KENSAKU HOGEN, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, said that the issues raised during the general debate would guide him in his work.

Drawing attention to a question on the lack of a central mechanism to coordinate the United Nations ever-growing presence in cyberspace, Mr. Hogen referred to the Secretary-General's report on the implementation of information and communications measures. In it, the Secretary-General said the Department of Public Information (DPI) was responsible for coordinating and managing the United Nations home page, as well as for its public information content. Mr. Hogen stressed that DPI already had an operation which enabled it to play a central and rapidly evolving role in managing, coordinating and providing public information through the United Nations website.

To a remark that not much had changed on the home page since its inception, he drew attention to an additional link requested by the Working Group on Informatics of the Economic and Social Council, as well as to a rearrangement of some buttons to accommodate the page relating to United Nations reform. Indeed, changes were being made almost daily to the website. There was now a new comprehensive General Assembly page and a completely new audio/visual page. New databases included information on landmines, peacekeeping training, the bibliographic data of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the UN-I-QUE -- the UN Information Quest. The number of files stored and served from the web server had increased over 500 per cent over the past 16 months.

Concerning the reliance on the personal capacity and interest of different individuals in DPI and various other departments for the dissemination of information, he said that with his and the Secretary-General's new emphasis on the Internet, ad hoc arrangements had been replaced by an Information Technology Section in his office. In other departments, coordinated mechanisms had also been developed as resources permitted. Moreover, he intended to strengthen the leadership of DPI's Information Technology Section. The Department would continue to actively monitor the site and work closely with content providers to ensure that it remained a timely, authoritative and user-friendly source of information.

He said that DPI's aim was to include all six official United Nations languages on its website. English, French and Spanish were already in use. The pilot project for a Russian home page would be launched tomorrow, and plans had already begun to introduce an Arabic-language home page. Moreover, an inter-departmental working group would meet regularly on website matters. In addition, the United Nations information centre in Lisbon had already produced an Internet page in Portuguese, which included comprehensive information about the Organization. It was available by clicking on the "UNICs" button on the United Nations home page.

On Chernobyl-related activities, the Under-Secretary-General said the DPI was instrumental in organizing events during the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and would continue to cover that issue. The Department's radio programmes included information about Chernobyl to coincide with the anniversary of the disaster and the Daily Highlights, which were posted on the Internet, also reflected any Chernobyl-related news, such as the launching of appeals for assistance. In addition, press release coverage continued to cover any General Assembly action on that issue. The DPI intended to continue devoting attention to Chernobyl, in accordance with the mandate given to it by the Assembly.

Mention had been made of the need to take advantage of opportunities provided by such major United Nations events as the General Assembly special session on drug control issues and the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he said. The DPI was going ahead in implementing its strategy for that special session. With only four weeks to go, it had accelerated its media outreach campaign to generate coverage of the special session, and there had already been some positive news stories.

The DPI had undertaken major activities to launch the year commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he went on to say. Throughout 1998, the Department was continuing to focus activities on that anniversary. They would culminate on 10 December with the special meeting of the General Assembly and other activities that DPI was organizing in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Regarding concerns raised by some delegations, he said the DPI continued to implement fully the mandated programmes on the question of Palestine, as well as on decolonization.

On the production of important DPI material in all official languages, Mr. Hogen said the Department was conscious of its responsibility to reach the broadest possible audience. Lack of resources was the only reason for the Department's inability to produce all its publications in the official languages. Publications published in all official languages were The Charter of the United Nations, Annual Report of the Secretary-General and UN in Brief.

Responding to the concern of some delegations about the number of publications produced by the DPI and the need to streamline them, he said that all of the Department's outputs, including publications, would be carefully assessed to ensure that they fulfilled important needs in a cost-effective way. Despite the importance of electronic media to information dissemination, the print medium remained the principal and most effective way for communicating ideas and concepts around the world. The role of authoritative, accurate and timely publications remained undiminished; their impact on opinion and policy was crucial to the realization of the Department's mandates.

On the call for a cost-based, consumer-driven process with regard to publications, Mr. Hogen said that the Secretary-General had himself stressed the revitalization of DPI's more demand-driven approach to publications, to make them more widely available, more cost-effective, more timely and more marketable. Such publications as the UN Chronicle, Africa Recovery and Image and Reality had already been well received. The popular Basic Facts had been completely redesigned for the new edition, which would be published in June.

There was a large official United Nations publications programme, comprising of hundreds of titles produced by substantive departments and regional commissions, he said. Sometimes, publications under that programme were assumed to be part of DPI's programme, creating the perception that the Department was too heavily involved in publishing. The principal DPI publications were the UN Yearbook, the UN Chronicle, Africa Recovery, Basic Facts About the United Nations, Image and Reality, Blue Helmets, Development Update, UN in Brief and Development Business.

Responding to a query about preparations for the special session of the General Assembly on small island developing States, scheduled for September 1999, Mr. Hogen said that DPI was formulating an information strategy for the two-day special session. Plans were to launch DPI's outreach at the April 1999 meeting of the Commission on Sustainable Development, the preparatory body for the special session. The strategy would make use of the print media, as well as of television and the Internet.

On another subject, he said the daily press briefings by the Spokesman for the Secretary-General were repeated to delegations at 12:30 p.m., thereby ensuring that they were fully informed of the latest developments at the United Nations. The briefings were broadcast live on United Nations Television and their audio feeds could be heard on the United Nations Radio Bulletin Board by calling 963-3777 from 1 p.m each day. If both briefings were missed, the delegations could still obtain a summary.

With respect to radio programmes in French and Creole, Mr. Hogen said the Department would continue to produce programmes in those languages for appropriate distribution in the Caribbean. The Department continued to use the services of the Caribbean News Agency to relay its programmes to individual stations. The DPI appreciated the importance attached by Haitian listeners to programme content and their interest in specific themes that addressed their concerns. The radio programme productions in all nine non-official languages were adaptation programmes, and to make an exception for one was to make an exception for all.

Regarding questions about Russian-language radio programmes, he said the current level of Russian radio programme production was the maximum that could be delivered within existing resources. In order to strengthen and refine programming in Russian, the Department would provide a full-time production assistant post to support programme production.

Turning to questions about a direct radio broadcasting capacity for DPI, he said the Department would share with Member States the findings and recommendations of the feasibility study on that subject. Its position had consistently been to supplement the information disseminated about the United Nations by national and international media, not to compete with them. In the present congested media environment, in which local, national, regional and international priorities competed for scarce space and air time, an enhanced information delivery capacity by the United Nations became increasingly important.

United Nations Radio produced and disseminated two programmes in Bangla every week, Mr. Hogen said, responding to another question which had been asked. The news programme was broadcast to Bangladesh via shortwave, and the magazine programme was sent out on tape. Like all non-official languages, the Bangla programmes were adapted.

Regarding technical requirements for additional access to the Optical Disk System, he said the Ghanaian mission was currently using only one of its 10 entitlements for access to that system. To obtain additional passwords, the mission should contact the Optical Disk System project by phone at 212-963-3861 to request additional log-ins, which could be shared with the home government.

Mr. Hogen said that United Nations Television was involved in a range of programming during the observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Over the past year, some 15 items in the UN in Action TV series of television news magazine had been devoted to aspects of the Organization's work in the human rights field. All those items had referred specifically to the fiftieth anniversary. In addition to being broadcast on the CNN World Report, they had been distributed in five languages to broadcasters in more than 100 countries.

A 30- and 50-minute documentary on the historical background to the Universal Declaration was currently being edited and would be ready for release to broadcasters this summer, he went on to say. Compilations of video footage on historical and current aspects of the United Nations role in human rights were also available to broadcasters. In addition, aspects of human rights had been the subject of the United Nations Television discussion programme, World Chronicle. Events at Headquarters in New York and Geneva relating to human rights were covered on video and made available to international television news syndicates.

A 30-second and 60-second video spot, in six languages, was sent by satellite to broadcasters around the world for the launching last year of the observance of the fiftieth anniversary, he said. It had included a video package of the Secretary-General's Human Rights Day message.

Regarding the International Year of the Ocean, he said it was expected that items on that subject would be produced as part of the UN in Action series this month. A World Chronicle programme on that issue would also be produced.

On the need for a training programme for national information officers, the Under-Secretary-General said that DPI had held a briefing and training programme for newly appointed national information officers in December 1997. The Department was also organizing a training programme this year for reference assistants from the Americas region, to strengthen their skills in traditional and computerized reference services.

Mr. Hogen expressed his appreciation to delegations and reiterated his desire to work closely with the Committee.

HOSSAM ZAKI (Egypt) asked the Under-Secretary-General to circulate an unofficial transcript of his remarks. He was also asked to elaborate on his response relating to a United Nations radio broadcasting capacity. Egypt considered that possibility to be a pioneer area for study. As such, his delegation wished to be kept apprised with respect to the feasibility study being undertaken.

FERNANDO ENRIQUE PETRELLA (Argentina) said the Under-Secretary-General's detailed answers demonstrated his awareness and keen involvement in the matters before the Committee and asked for a written version of those remarks. He expressed appreciation for the DPI staff responsible for creating the United Nations press releases, which were among the quickest and most authentic sources of information available to delegations. He also expressed appreciation for the United Nations information centre in Argentina. The Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General was also to be thanked for the clarity, precision and swiftness of its responses.

He said he had keenly followed Mr. Hogen's remarks concerning the use of the Spanish language. While there was always room for improvement, his delegation was very satisfied with the translation of the United Nations press releases, which were of very high calibre.

Mr. HOGEN, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, said he would present his comments to the Committee in writing as soon as possible. The question of a United Nations direct radio broadcasting capability was in its embryonic stage. The proposal was still being studied, but in due time he would discuss it with Member States. He thanked the representative of Argentina for his kind words regarding some of the Department's publications.

Preparation of Committee's Draft Report

ANTONIO JOSE FERREIRA SIMOES (Brazil) drew attention to a draft resolution which had been informally circulated by the "Group of 77" developing countries and China (not yet available). He said the text was balanced, and was unaware of any negative reaction to it. If that was not the case, the Committee Chairman should hold informal consultations aimed at reaching consensus.

ROBERT W. ZAAGMAN (Netherlands) said that not everyone had received copies of the draft resolution circulated by the Chairman of the Group of 77. Also, the present text did not achieve consensus. The Western Group would therefore require a meeting before informal plenary consultations on the text. It was possible, however, that a consensus text could be reached.

HOLGER FEDERICO MARTINSEN (Argentina) said that if there were to be consultations in capitals and in New York regarding that text, a date should be set prior to the end of the current session for the Committee to consider the results of those consultations. It was essential that the Committee have another informal and early round of discussions for that purpose.

SUDJADNAN PARNOHADININGRAT (Indonesia), speaking as Chairman of the Group of 77, said he wished to see the process get rolling. There would be time to deliberate on the draft resolutions already submitted. It was important that the Committee produce a final result as expeditiously as possible. The aim of the Group of 77 was to strengthen the Committee by submitting its draft text informally to the Committee Chairman. It could then be addressed with the aim of arriving at a text which would satisfy every group to the benefit of the entire membership. He was pleased to note the open-mindedness expressed by the representative of the Netherlands.

Mr. SIMOES (Brazil) said that one of the issues in the forthcoming consultations would be the possibility of resuming informal plenary meetings to discuss the draft resolution. Indeed, the idea of employing an informal, open-ended working group had been put forward by the Group of 77 and he had not heard any opposition to that idea.

FAYSSAL MEKDAD (Syria) said that efforts must begin as quickly as possible to consolidate an informal working group of the Committee to discuss the draft resolution and draft report. That would enable the Committee, which was in a delicate and important transitional phase, to carry out its mandate. The experiences of past years should not be repeated. The proposal to meet for a transparent discussion of all the issues could not be challenged.

Mr. ZAAGMAN (Netherlands) said the Western Group had not yet been able to reach a common position owing to the lack of instructions from certain capitals. That was why he had refrained from making any detailed comments on the draft text put forth by the Group of 77. The Western Group had argued in favour of an extended Bureau. The relevant General Assembly resolution had established the existence of the expanded Bureau and recognized that it was still in force. By calling for the convening in an open-ended working group, the Group of 77 was proposing a change in that situation. The Western Group still needed to meet to assess its position on a number of issues, including that one. The current meeting should be suspended to allow time for consultations without prejudging their outcome.

Mr. MARETINSEN (Argentina) said he shared the Netherlands' concern that the results of the working group's deliberations should not be prejudged. That was why the meeting should be suspended. The mechanism of the extended Bureau had not functioned effectively during the Committee's session last year, he added.

CHEN RANFENG (China) said that although he understood the need for delegations to receive instructions from their capitals, there was not much time left. The Group of 77 had drafted a balanced objective text which was based on past resolutions. Delegations should speedily bring it to discussion. The Committee on Information should be open-minded and conduct its meetings in a spirit of cooperation. Reaching consensus required cooperation from all sides.

Mr. MEKDAD (Syria) said the draft resolution addressed the relationship between the Bureau and the Secretariat, and not the Committee's working methods. The most realistic approach to achieving the Committee's goal of transparent dialogue was the establishment of an open-ended working group.

JOSE ALBERTO DE SOUSA (Portugal), Committee Chairman, said that all statements shared a common will for cooperation and a wish to move forward as soon as possible. The sooner the meeting could be suspended for consultations, the sooner the Committee could proceed with its objective.

NACERDINE SAI (Algeria) expressed a wish to work on the substance of the draft resolution. The provision in question simply stated that consultations should be held between the Secretariat and the Committee through the normal elected Bureau of the Committee, which was comprised of the representatives of the regional groups. The collective will of a very large number of countries for Committee reform must not be put off. The aim was to promote progress towards a negotiated text that would reflect the views of all members.

MASAHIRO KOHARA (Japan) said he had no objection to the creation of an open-ended working group to discuss the draft resolution. In order to reach agreement, appropriate time -- perhaps one or two days -- should be given to some groups for internal consultations. Following that, an open-ended working group should be convened.

YAKUBU ABDULAI (Ghana) said he was unaware of any General Assembly resolution which recognized a so-called "extended Bureau" of the Committee. The arguments being used in other forums to prevent the equitable expansion of the Security Council seemed to have been introduced into the Committee on Information in order to prevent developing countries from openly presenting their views on its substantive work. The Group of 77 was expressing its loss of confidence in a so-called extended Bureau system. The Bureau and the Chairman must address that issue expeditiously if the Committee was to avoid the kind of failure in its work that occurred last year.

HICHAM HAMDAN (Lebanon) said it was not necessary to invent a new venue for negotiations within the United Nations. The Committee had a very well-established mechanism, and it was well-known that the Chairman had provided for open informal negotiations, during which regional spokesmen exchanged their positions.

RODOLFO BENITEZ VERSON (Cuba) said that while he understood that some delegations needed instructions from their capitals, very little time remained. At some point, it would become necessary to set a date or a deadline for those informal consultations and to convene a formal meeting in order to take the necessary decisions on the draft. The Cuban delegation called for transparent negotiations aimed at reading consensus on the draft text. The adoption of other decision-making processes should be avoided.

The meeting was suspended for 45 minutes. The Chairman then invited all interested delegations to an informal meeting in Conference B at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, 12 May, to discuss the draft resolution which had been circulated. The Committee Secretary then announced that the Group of 77 would meet 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, also in Conference Room B.

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