SG/T/2261

ACTIVITIES OF SECRETARY-GENERAL IN ITALY AND ALGERIA, 9 - 13 DECEMBER 2000

The Secretary-General arrived in Palermo, Italy, in the evening of Saturday, 9 December.

He was met at the airport by the Prefect of the Province of Palermo, Renato Profilio; the Mayor of the City of Palermo, Leoluca Orlando; and other Italian officials. Also there were Under-Secretary-General Pino Arlacchi, Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and the Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Rome, Staffan de Mistura.

The Secretary-General and Mrs. Annan had a private programme on Sunday, 10 December, and part of Monday, until the evening when they attended an official dinner hosted by Mr. Arlacchi for heads of State and government attending the signing conference for the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

The Secretary-General opened that conference on Tuesday morning. Italy's Minister of Justice, Piero Fassino, delivered welcoming remarks. In his speech, Mr. Fassino said that "the Convention is an organic and coordinated corpus of legal indications that may represent, once it has been ratified in the States, a basic cooperation instrument for the fight against organized crime". He also announced that 25 per cent of the value of all Italian confiscation of illicit assets will be donated to the United Nations Drug Control and Crime Prevention Office.

In his speech, the Secretary-General described the Palermo Convention as a "watershed event in the reinforcement of our fight against organized crime", and he urged all States to ratify it at the earliest possible date, to bring the Convention into force "as a matter or urgency" (see Press Release SG/SM/7658 of 11 December).

He was followed by the Italian President, Carlo Ciampi, who said, "We know we cannot waste time. Organized crime has become a great problem in our times."

Three local Italian officials then delivered welcoming remarks -- the President of the region of Sicily, the President of the Province of Palermo, and the Mayor of Palermo. The President of Poland, which Poland had prepared the first draft of the Convention submitted to the General Assembly, then took the floor.

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The Secretary-General and the heads of State and government then proceeded to another room where the Convention was signed.

At around noon, the Secretary-General and his delegation left Teatro Massimo, where the ceremony took place. They boarded an Algerian government plane bound for Algiers, where the Secretary-General took part in the signing ceremony of the Ethiopia-Eritrea peace agreement. Included in the Secretary-General's delegation was his Special Representative for Ethiopia and Eritrea, Legwaila Joseph Legwaila.

The ceremony, which took place at the Palais des Nations in Algiers, included signature of the agreement by the two principals, Isaias Afwerki, President of Eritrea, and Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of Ethiopia. The signing was witnessed by Madeleine Albright, United States Secretary of State; Salim A. Salim, Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity (OAU); Rino Serri, Special Representative of the European Union; Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President of Algeria; and Secretary-General Annan.

There were statements by President Afwerki; Prime Minister Zenawi; Gnassingbe Eyadema, President of Togo and Chairman of the OAU; President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria; Secretary of State Albright; Secretary-General Annan; Mr. Salim; Mr. Serri; and President Bouteflika of Algeria.

The Secretary-General, in his speech, noted that the signing of the agreement marked a "victory for the voice of reason, for the power of diplomacy, and for the recognition that neither one of these countries -- nor Africa as a whole -- can afford another decade, another year, another day of conflict". He reiterated his hope that other leaders would look to the signing of the agreement and "find the wisdom to end their own wars, and begin to put their peoples' interests first" (see Press Release SG/SM/7659 of 12 December).

The Secretary-General left Algiers for Rome in the early evening, where he spent the night before taking a flight to New York on Wednesday, 13 December.

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