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Celebrities can play a bigger role in working with the United Nations to call attention to the world's overlooked or under-reported crises, but they must be well informed if they are to have a positive impact, the actor and director George Clooney said today.

Darfur is headed for a disaster unless the Sudanese Government changes its mind and allows a force of United Nations peacekeepers to take over from the existing African Union (AU) operation in the strife-torn region, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan will be travelling to Havana, Cuba, this week to attend the annual summit meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), his spokesman announced today.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today said the recent conflict in Lebanon had been a “wake-up” call to the governments he visited during his recent diplomacy in the region, highlighting the need for a wider Middle East peace settlement.

The United Nations Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste is close to finishing its report into the violence earlier this year that engulfed the country, causing 37 deaths and forcing more than 150,000 people – or about 15 per cent of the national population – to flee their homes.

The senior United Nations envoy in Kosovo today told the Security Council that integration, not isolation, is the answer for the minority Serb population, as the 15-member body met to discuss Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s latest report on the future status of the UN-run province.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called for renewed efforts to reach a negotiated solution to the impasse over Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, noting that he detected a “slight shift” in the country’s position.

The two leading presidential candidates who emerged from July’s historic elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today met face to face for the first time since their supporters engaged in deadly clashes last month, according to the UN mission in the embattled central African country.

Kofi Annan, who this year completes his second and final five-year term as United Nations Secretary-General, today said the world body’s Member States should move quickly to select a successor and stressed that whoever is chosen will need to work closely with them.

Following an agreement between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas on forming a unity Government, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today that the diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East, which includes the United Nations, will meet next week to discuss these developments and possible ways to provide humanitarian assistance to the occupied territory.