Ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for being here. As you know I am leaving tomorrow for Geneva to attend the second international meeting on the financing of the reform of the security sector and as I know that there is some interest in issues which the UN is involved, I would come before you and answer some of your questions.

So who is going to ask the first question?

Question: Could you just bring us up to date, there has been warlord fighting in the North and in the East, what is the situation on UN workers [inaudible]?

SRSG: As you know we have been fairly closely involved in the North and my colleague, Jean Arnault has been up there twice and we have people staying there all the time. One of our military advisors is going back there on Friday. I think the various factions that were creating the tension in Mazar and elsewhere in the North, have signed an agreement that hopefully is going to normalise the situation both in Mazar, around Mazar, Sari Pul and everywhere. Of course, our work and that of NGOs have suffered and there is still some concerns about this situation, but we are hopeful that things will improve. In the East, we have not been, as United Nations, involved, but the Interim Administration, I think, have made their views very strongly known. They want the decisions of the Interim Administration to be respected and we support that very strongly.

We have told very, very frankly to the parties in the North and also to the players in the East that it is indispensable that everyone puts the national interest before factional or other interests if Afghanistan is to move forward.

Question: The selection of delegates to the Loya Jirga in many areas has been hijacked by local commanders and warlords. How widespread a problem is this and what is your reaction to that?

SRSG: That is a typical press exaggeration, BBC is not used to making these exaggerations. There has been indeed, up and down the country, a number of irregularities in the process, and there has been a number of attempts to intimidate or otherwise influence the process. I do not have any precise statistics about that, but I am delighted to say that until now the process has been very peaceful and that, this is very important, and the people have not let themselves be intimidated.

In some cases where there was these attempts at intimidation, the meetings have been adjourned and they have either been staged again or are going to be staged again. So there are some cases where things have happened and they should not have, we have kept the Administration informed, and you may have seen that Chairman Karzai has made a very strong statement appealing once again to the representatives of the authorities not to intervene, and we have also spoken to the army, to the faction leaders all over the country, to the Ministry of Interior and we are fairly satisfied with the level of cooperation from everyone.

Let me give you an update on where we are in the various regions. First the Northwest region, Mazar-I-Sharif, the Commission thinks that this phase of the process will be finished in four or five days. The East - Jalalabad, Northeast – Kunduz, Central – Bamiyan and Ghazni, they think they will be finished from 20 May. Kabul, Southeast – that is Gardez, Southwest – Kandahar, West – Herat, they hope to be finished by 25 May. So there are some delays but if these dates are respected we hope to be there on 10 June as scheduled.

Question: So this is the completion of the selection and election of the delegates.

SRSG: No I think this is just the selection. The election will be, apart from the logistics which is a little bit complicated, reasonably straightforward after.

Question: [Translated from Dari] As the United Nations played a very important role in the Afghanistan talks in Bonn, and as the first phase of the selection of the representatives is going to be finished and we are going to have the big Loya Jirga convened, are future Cabinet members going to be appointed by the United Nations or the Loya Jirga will appoint the Head of State and the Head of State will decide on other Cabinet members?

SRSG: The Loya Jirga has a mandate which is in the Bonn Agreement and the commission will be publishing soon the procedures on how the Loya Jirga is going to proceed. So, there is one thing that is certain and that is that the United Nations will have nothing to do with the formation of the next government. You will see in these regulations, and also it is no secret for anybody here that there is a very intensive political debate going in this country to discuss all these things and I am fairly confident that the results of the Loya Jirga will be very satisfactory for all the people of Afghanistan and that is more important than Radio Mashaad or the United Nations

Question: Mr Brahimi, could you tell us what’s your assessment on the process leading to the Loya Jirga. Would you say that it is free and democratic or [inaudible]?

SRSG: If by democratic you mean elections, – one man, one vote, one woman, one vote – it is not. It is not an election. I have been told it is the fairest system based on the traditional ways of getting a Loya Jirga together. In very few cases, the turn out of people has been low. In most cases the turnout has been very very big and people have consulted and they have worked out a consensus through which they have designated their representative. Considering where we are, at what stage after this horrible crisis that Afghanistan has lived through, I think it is a reasonably democratic system.

Question: Were you suggesting from your earlier answer that unless all these regions and districts meet the deadlines that they promised that there is some risk that the Loya Jirga will not commence as expected on the 10th of June?

SRSG: Not at all You see, we were hoping that everything would be finished by the 20th May but we have left a number of days until the 10th of June to allow for these kinds of slippages so even if there are a couple of more days delayed, we will be all right. So far, we are all right, but of course if there is too much rain or one never knows, but for the moment we are still on time.

Question: [Translation from Dari] question on the composition of the independent commission which are 21 members but only three women. Do you think that those three women can work equally to the men in the commission?

SRSG: Sure, three women are more than 18 men.

Question: [Translation from Dari] as the emphasis of the interim administration and the United Nations is on the free election of the real representative of the people, by the people, but recently I had a press trip around the country especially in some villages where the first phase of the elections were finished and people were complaining that most of the candidates were elected by force by the commanders and meanwhile I have traveled to [inaudible], where there used to be a huge clash between the two sites and hundreds of people were killed and the representatives.

SRSG: Where were 100 people killed? 100 people killed?

Question: [continued] Killed and injured by the internal clashes.

SRSG: How many killed and how many injured?

Question: [continued] 35 people were killed. Actually this was in the past two years and all the agents were working there and are the witnesses of that.

SRSG: To speak of 100 people dead three years ago and give the impression that they were killed yesterday is rather serious for a newspaper. So, now, I think I see what you are driving at. As I said earlier, the reports we had, is that there are problems in some places, attempts by commanders to manipulate or influence the process. We have heard of money being used to influence the process. We have heard of commanders threatening people. But I repeat, that as far as we know this has happened in not too many places. In many places the people have resisted very courageously these threats and this intimidation. I know of one place where the people who spent a lot of money did not get one man of their supporters chosen. I have heard also of places where the tribal system has functioned and people had agreed beforehand amongst themselves about who should represent them. But we have seen thousands and thousands of people turning up in these meetings. No guns. In some cases where people came with guns, they were thrown out or the process was suspended. So far the process is by far not perfect but I think it is not as bad as you said and there were not 100 people dead anyway.

Question: [Translation from Dari] question on the meeting in Geneva on police and security. Which part of the army will be financed by that meeting in Geneva and from your point of view, which kind of people will be included in the future army of Afghanistan? These all Mujahaideen or the two battalions which were recently trained by ISAF. How do you assess this situation? When I said Mujahaideen, it is not only the Mujahaideen, the educated military people and when I talk about the finance it takes equipment, uniforms and salary.

SRSG: As you know the trust fund which is set up by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and UNDP and where part of the money coming from Tokyo is going to be, does not cover the needs of the military. It does not cover either the needs of the police. So we have created two separate trust funds. One for the police that is going to be run by UNDP and one has just been created a couple of days ago which will be run by UNAMA for the army. At the beginning of April, we had a first meeting with the donors about their contributions to the reform of the security sector, as we say, that is training of the army, salaries of the army, training of the police and equipment of the police and the army. We are going now to the second meeting with an updated document on the army and the police that takes into consideration the observations that were made during the last meeting. In Geneva we will also discuss a programme for the mobilisation and reintegration of former combatants. What we hope will happen ultimately is that we will get resources for about 70,000 [strong] national police and we also hope to get the resources for the creation of a national army of 60,000 soldiers an air force of 8,000 and a border guard of 12,000. I presume that this army will be composed of some former combatants and some new recruits.

I also expect that this national army just as the national police, will be multi-ethnic, will be composed of people from all over Afghanistan. So this is a long term project and we hope that the international community is going to contribute generously to it and we have to remember that, in general, in situations like this, in other countries, the international community does not contribute financial support to the military aspects of things.

Question: [inaudible] on the assistance to returning refugees from Pakistan and Iran, who are coming back at a very fast pace.

SRSG: Well, thank you. This is indeed a problem. On the one hand we are delighted that refugees are coming back in very very large numbers. But, of course, the downside of that is that this is a very big pressure on the interim administration, on local administration, on the United Nations and NGOs. For example, the city of Kabul is receiving almost 40% of all the returnees. Whether they are all from Kabul or somewhere else, I am not absolutely certain. But still these are very very large numbers for the city to absorb. I think it is about 200,000 for the city to absorb in such a short time.

We are making an appeal for funds both for UNHCR and for WFP, in particular, because the budget that was prepared and the pledges that have been made by countries have not been all paid up. There are problems, and we are by the end of, I think, probably by the end of June, if we don’t receive more funds, both UNHCR and WFP will be running short of resources.

Question: You said that in the future government of Afghanistan, I mean the cabinet, the United Nations will not have any role and will the ISAF be included in that?

SRSG: ISAF provides security, I hope [it] doesn’t form government.

We are now working with all the government agencies to make sure that security is provided for the Loya Jirga and I am satisfied with the cooperation that exists between all parties. I am fairly certain that the ISAF will stay on after their initial six months in Kabul and around Kabul even if no decision has been taken about expansion of ISAf to other parts of Afghanistan.

Question: As we see the United Nations has been interested in the creation of a national army comprised of 60,000 soldiers. In a country where there are 200,000 armed men and with a lot of problems, how can we deal with the remaining of those people?

SRSG: I think a lot of people would not agree with you and people will tell you that there are not 200,000 armed men. There are a lot of people who have weapons at home, yes. But I think that 60,000, an army of 60,000 people, well organized, well trained, well equipped will be more than enough for the needs of Afghanistan.

Britain, France, Italy. They are all countries with more than 60 million people. That is almost three times the population of Aghanistan. Each one of these countries has now an army of less than 100,000. So I think in proportion to its population, an army of 80,000, as a matter of fact if you count the air force and the border guards, is rather good.

Question: The countries that you mention don’t have the problems that we have.

SRSG: That’s because they don’t have a big army (laughter).

Thank you very

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