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The Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders met for direct talks today in Cyprus as negotiations resumed on a plan by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to reunify the island nation before its entry into the European Union on 1 May.

A United Nations team today begins assessing the humanitarian situation in two northern Haitian towns as unrest blocks access to parts of the troubled country, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

The United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) has arrested members of a militia suspected of planning an attack near a market in the eastern province of Ituri and involved in an exchange of shots that wounded an investigating UN military officer.

While industrialized countries undermine Africa's anti-poverty efforts with huge subsidies for their own commodity producers, the continent's own non-fuel exports have lost international market share over the last two decades, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said today.

Failure to increase international assistance to post-conflict Côte d'Ivoire for the disarmament of its militias could lead to the destabilization of precarious neighbouring countries, the United Nations aid coordinating office said today.

Representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) gathered at United Nations Headquarters in New York today to hear ideas on how to explain to the world body's critics the role that it plays in maintaining peace and security and promoting development.

With the selection of a Somali transitional national parliament on the horizon, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the leaders of the Horn of Africa country to ensure that political progress is accompanied by a tangible improvement in security.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is serving to contain violence in the volatile region, the outgoing head of the operation said today.

Seven tropical community groups won the 2004 United Nations Equator Prize today for extraordinary work conserving their biological wealth while reducing community poverty.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today that killing wild birds is not an appropriate measure to control the spread of bird flu, which has already ravaged domestic poultry farming in nine Asian countries and led to 29 human cases, 20 of them fatal.