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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today it is stepping up efforts to assist displaced Angolans to relocate home after a 27-year civil war and expects 12,000 returnees from neighbouring countries by week's end.

A senior United Nations relief official led an 11-person team into the Liberian capital Monrovia today to accelerate efforts to get desperately needed food and clean water to thousands of people crowding the capital's streets.

The head of the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) opened his first official visit with top authorities in neighbouring Uganda with an update on the overall Congolese peace process and progress of the new power-sharing government.

Strongly condemning Hezbollah's shelling of Israel from Lebanon, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged all governments with influence over the group to "deter it from any further actions which could increase the tension in the area" and called upon the Israeli Government to exercise utmost restraint.

The United Nations has suspended all missions to two border districts in southern Afghanistan following a series of attacks there last week on humanitarian workers and Afghan soldiers.

A United Nations treaty to combat corruption worldwide should be ready by the autumn, following major breakthroughs in negotiations on the return of assets obtained through bribery and embezzlement to the country of origin, and on a broad series of preventive measures, the UN office in Vienna announced today.

The top United Nations official for AIDS today welcomed the South African Government's decision to provide antiretroviral treatment to all the people living with HIV in the country, saying the resolution brings hope for millions of people and their families.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, is back in Baghdad after a weekend visit to Egypt, where he met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa as part of his consultations with Iraq's neighbours on the UN role there.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today welcomed the decision of Liberian President Charles Taylor to resign office, hoping that it marked the beginning of the end of the "long nightmare" of the people of the war-torn West African country.

World airline passenger traffic is forecast to rebound with 4.4 per cent growth in 2004 and 6.3 per cent in 2005 following three years of decline or stagnation, thanks to a gradual restoration of confidence and an improving world economy, the United Nations aviation agency said today.