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The United Nations refugee agency today hailed the Colombian Government's five-year commitment of $2.2 billion for the protection and assistance of 2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) driven from their homes by four decades of fighting between government forces, leftist rebels and rightist paramilitaries.

Among a parade of ethnic costumes and other celebratory events marking Staff Day at United Nations Headquarters today, Secretary-General Kofi Annan praised the performance of personnel during "this rollercoaster year" at a staff assembly and, with other officials, paid tribute to all staff members at a wreath-laying for those 177 who died in service in the last 17 months.

An interim framework agreement for peace for western Sudan's Darfur could come by the end of the year, but a process of inclusive talks should then begin so that the population could address the root causes of the conflict, the head of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said today.

Secretary General Kofi Annan called on Member States of the United Nations to divorce the urgent consideration of reform of the Organization from the equally critical need to pass a biennium budget by the end of the year, without which ongoing operations would be straight-jacketed.

A military delegation from the African Union (AU) has arrived in North Kivu in the troubled eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to assess the possible deployment of 7,000 troops to disarm foreign armed groups who have been attacking civilians, the UN Mission in DRC (MONUC) said.

Nuclear power plants are performing at higher safety levels today than they were two decades ago, but their operators must avoid complacency at a time when more than half the world's plants are more than 20 years old, the United Nations nuclear power agency said.

Some 140,000 surviving Sri Lankan households which lost their livelihoods in last December's tsunami will benefit from new United Nations agricultural development loans to help replace infrastructure and equipment for fishing communities, as well as restore coral reefs and replant vital coastal vegetation.

Long an advocate of completing a treaty against all forms of terrorism by the end of this year, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today voiced disappointment over the failure of the General Assembly's committee on legal affairs to reach agreement on a draft comprehensive convention.

Two former members of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were released today from the detention unit of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, after having been cleared of war crimes during the deadly ethnic fighting in 1998-99 that led the United Nations to take over the administration of the Serbian province.

In the wake of tropical storm Gamma, which left at least 34 people dead and almost 90,000 affected in Honduras, the United Nations system in the country has dispatched five assessment teams to scope out long-term damage from flooding and mudslides.