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Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today that Iraqi authorities have officially requested assistance from the United Nations in drafting and building consensus around the country’s new constitution.

The United Nations Security Council today extended the mandate of its peacekeeping UN Operation in Burundi (ONUB) for six months until 1 December and called on the African Great Lakes country’s political actors to try harder to ensure the success of their political transition, national reconciliation and long-term stability.

The Security Council today strongly condemned all acts of sexual abuse and exploitation committed by UN peacekeeping personnel, underlining the importance of maintaining zero tolerance for such abuses and advocating their investigation and punishment.

The United Nations chief of political affairs is visiting Cyprus, Greece and Turkey to assess the mood on the island and in the region after the parallel referenda in Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities late last April on Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s proposal to re-unite before joining the European Union (EU).

The United Nations Security Council today welcomed the progress made in recruiting, training and equipping Iraqi security forces and looked forward to those forces progressively playing a greater role and ultimately assuming responsibility for Iraq's national security.

The United Nations envoy for the world's poorest countries today called on developing countries that have progressed beyond such poverty to open their markets to products from the least developed countries and to double such assistance to them as education and training.

The scale of toxic chemical waste from unused and obsolete pesticides in Latin America is far bigger than previously estimated, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said today, urging international funding to address the problem.

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator today appealed to Sudan to drop charges against a senior official of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) who is apparently being targeted for the agency's publication of a report detailing violence against women in the country.

The senior United Nations envoy to West Africa today hailed the fact that Guinea-Bissau will go forward with elections planned for later this month but warned leaders there that the international community will not abide provocations during the polling process.

The top United Nations official in Afghanistan today congratulated civic groups there for launching a Code of Conduct governing their work and said it would pave the way for improved efforts to rebuild the war-ravaged country.