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There is general agreement that violence will never resolve the conflict raging in Darfur, envoys from the United Nations and African Union told reporters in Khartoum today following talks in the vast western region of Sudan.

Highlighting that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to pose “a threat to international peace and security in the region,” the Security Council today extended the UN mission in the impoverished African country for another two months.

The top United Nations envoy in Kosovo today asked for the immediate resignation of the UN police commissioner there after the deaths of two people when police used rubber bullets against pro-independence demonstrators in the Albanian-majority Serbian province that the world organization has run since 1999.

The top United Nations official entrusted with preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons today welcomed the agreement reached with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as “a step in the right direction” towards achieving a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

Governments have two years to see whether a voluntary programme to reduce health and environmental threats from toxic mercury is working under a new United Nations-backed initiative or if a legally-binding treaty is needed to curb the heavy metal linked with a wide range of medical problems, including neurological damage to babies.

The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland are at the top and the United States and the United Kingdom at the bottom of a United Nations score card launched today that provides the first comprehensive assessment of the well-being of children and young people in the world’s advanced economies.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today condemned the deadly bombing in Iran that killed at least 18 people and wounded many more, reiterating that no cause can justify “terrorist violence.”

In a further effort to combat the global spread of deadly bird flu, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is holding a series of high-level seminars in Europe and Central Asia over the next month that will stress the importance of working with the media in getting the right preventive message out to the public.

A United Nations-backed group of countries involved in the peace process between the Georgian Government and Abkhaz separatists have called on both sides to immediately tackle security issues in north-west Georgia, where they fought a war 13 years ago that forced nearly 300,000 refugees to flee.

The United Nations Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission on the situation inside Darfur will not go to Sudan as planned because of continued uncertainty over whether the high-level team could obtain visas.