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The United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti has been emptying a city district of the burned tyres and stalled vehicles and repairing a section of railway as the troops do what they can to improve the lives of the people in the capital of the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Praising the enormous global outpouring of pledges for the victims of last week’s devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland today delivered “a few messages” of thanks, caution and pleas for coordination.

Landmine removal and victim assistance programmes around the world have received only $77 million of the $371 million they will need this year, with Afghanistan likely to sustain the largest single shortfall of $49 million, the United Nations Mine Action Service says.

The United Nations Security Council hopes “restraint will prevail” between the parties to the Middle East conflict so that Palestinian elections next Sunday can be conducted in a free, fair and inclusive manner, the President of the 15-member body for this month, Argentine Ambassador César Mayoral, said today.

The top United Nations envoy for Iraq held talks today with senior officials from neighbouring Jordan about the upcoming Iraqi elections and the country’s security situation, a day ahead of a meeting in the Jordanian capital of the region’s foreign ministers.

As Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other world leaders headed for Indonesia to launch an emergency appeal for countries devastated by last week's Asian tsunami, the top United Nations relief coordinator said today the emergency operation was making extraordinary progress but also faced extraordinary problems.

In a bid to reduce the appalling toll of future tsunamis, the United Nations is moving ahead with efforts to set up early warning systems in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas similar to one that already exists for the volcano and earthquake-prone Pacific Rim region.

In a United Nations-backed project, a two-masted ship will set sail this month from the tip of South America for Antarctica to witness first-hand the impacts of global warming and environmental change on the world’s most southerly continent.

Expressing concern over the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians during Israeli military operations in northern Gaza Strip on Monday after Palestinians there launched rocket attacks, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on both sides to fulfil their international obligations in the run-up to Palestinian elections next week.

To critics who say that there was too little relief effort in the early phase of last week’s devastating Asian tsunami, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland had three words today: “I respectfully disagree.”