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Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy leading the process to decide the future status of Kosovo today met with Serb political leaders in the Serbian province, which the UN has run since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops amid grave human rights abuses in fighting between majority Albanians and Serbs in 1999.

More than 100 representatives of different Somali groups, the United Nations, World Bank, donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) opened a four-day meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, today in an effort to develop a plan to rebuild a country that has been without a functioning government for 14 years.

A United Nations-sponsored report released today urges extra protection for the world’s small cetaceans – dolphins, porpoises and related species – more than two-thirds of which are at risk from entanglement in fishing nets and which are vulnerable to pollution, habitat degradation and military sonar.

The Security Council today threatened actions – which could include sanctions – against Eritrea and Ethiopia if, in the case of Eritrea, it does not immediately rescind its ban on United Nations flights in its airspace, and against both parties in the recently rekindled Horn of Africa border dispute if they do not reverse their military build up.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today welcomed the understanding that has been reached between Nepalese parliamentary parties and the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal (CPN-M) aimed at restoring multiparty democracy in the Himalayan country.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan today briefed the Security Council on his recent trip to the Middle East, touching on the issues of terrorism, Syria and Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

United Nations efforts helping Cambodia to set up special mixed courts to try ageing former leaders of the Khmer Rouge accused of killing hundreds of thousands of civilians during the 1970s are gaining momentum as Secretary-General Kofi Annan considers nominees for the tribunals' international components.

United Nations General Assembly President Jan Eliasson today expressed the hope that consultations on a new and strengthened human rights body, proposed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and authorized by the World Summit in September, will be wound up by the end of next month to allow a seamless transition from the existing Commission on Human Rights.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the official results of the Liberian presidential run-off elections announced today and congratulated Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on her election as Africa's first woman head of state in the modern era.

Despite the efforts of the international community, landmines, booby-traps and other explosive devices are victimizing civilians, causing excessive suffering to combatants and hindering the socio-economic reconstruction of societies struggling to emerge from the ravages of war, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.