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A senior United Nations human rights official today concluded a three-day visit to Tajikistan, part of a trip to Central Asia to enhance dialogue and technical cooperation between the governments of the region and the UN High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR).

The senior United Nations envoy in Kosovo sought to encourage Serb refugees to return home today with a visit to a Serbian village that had once been in an area of multi-ethnic coexistence but was left battered and empty after the conflict with Kosovo Albanians in 1999.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has written to Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom inviting their leaders to be represented at The Hague next week when he meets with the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot parties on a plan that would enable a united Cyprus to join the European Union.

The United Nations human rights chief is heading this week to the United States, where he will meet with President George W. Bush and top administration officials for talks on a host of issues, including human rights in the Middle East.

The United Nations Security Council will seek to boost the global fight against terrorism this week at a special meeting of its Counter-terrorism Committee (CTC) expected to be attended by more than 50 international, regional and sub-regional organizations.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called Iraq's destruction of banned Al Samoud 2 missiles and its offer to provide more details on its VX nerve gas and anthrax a "positive development" but repeated the views of UN weapons inspectors that "there's much more to be done."

The most "delicate question" currently before the Security Council - that of Iraq - will be taken up on Friday with an open briefing by the chief United Nations weapons inspectors, the current President of the 15-nation body said today.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has initiated talks with groups controlling parts of the country's Ituri region in hopes of dispatching a mission to investigate reports of violence and killings in the area.

Citing "significant deterioration" in Timor-Leste's security environment, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for a freeze in planned cutbacks of UN military and police forces that helped guide the territory to independence last year.

A senior Algerian diplomat has been appointed the new chief of the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).