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With Europe accounting for nine of the top 10 countries with the highest rates of suicide in the world, health ministers from 52 European countries opened a four-day United Nations-sponsored conference today to address mental health problems on a continent that is poorly equipped to cope.

The United Nations telecommunications agency will hold a conference of its highest policy-making body in an Arab state for the first time when its Member States meet next year in Qatar.

Expressing concern about the disarmament and security situations in Haiti, the United Nations Security Council today said it was planning a mission to the troubled Caribbean country in the next several months.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Ruud Lubbers held talks with high-ranking Pakistani officials in Islamabad today at the start of a visit to the region in which he will seek to solve the problem of an estimated 3 million Afghans still living in exile in Pakistan and Iran.

As ministers from more than 30 countries gathered in Geneva today to determine priorities for the nearly $1 billion United Nations flash appeal for the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, specialized UN agencies in the field are pinpointing areas for immediate action from mobilizing child trauma experts to delivering blankets.

The United Nations refugee agency is working with Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration to help some of the more than 250,000 people of Fallujah return to their city after it was heavily damaged in last November’s assault by United States-led forces against insurgents there.

With the second stage of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) set to be held in November in North Africa, a three-day African preparatory meeting next month in Ghana is to negotiate an action plan on achieving continent-wide distribution of communications technologies.

A global agreement, initialled in the office of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, is bringing $41 million from abroad to Haiti for its elections later this year, according to the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Four experts have been named to assist the work of the United Nations Security Council sanctions committee dealing with efforts to prevent such private parties as terrorists and black marketers from acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The United Nations envoy for Iraq today told a meeting of the country's neighbours and the eight leading industrialized nations that the world body remained committed to helping the Iraqi people and stressed the importance of this month's elections.