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With pneumonia estimated to kill nearly 2 million children worldwide every year, top United Nations health officials have welcomed the results of a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine trial in Gambia as demonstrating that a significant proportion of illness, disability and death in African children can be averted.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Member States today to impose greater accountability on those who commit crimes against United Nations and associated personnel carrying out their assignments, as staff members gathered to draw attention to the abduction, detention and disappearance of nearly 30 of their colleagues.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the Security Council to launch an independent international investigation into last month's assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri after receiving the report of a mission he set up to probe the circumstances, causes and consequences of the murder.

The senior United Nations envoy for Iraq has met with the country's top Shiite Muslim cleric as he begins his ninth week of intensive consultations to ensure that all elements of Iraqi society take part in writing a new constitution after Sunni Arabs largely stayed away from January's elections.

Farmers in Afghanistan, which accounts for 87 per cent of the world's opium and heroin products, are growing fewer opium poppies this year than last and overall output is expected to drop for the first time since 2001, according to the latest United Nations survey released ahead of a detailed annual report in the autumn.

The demands for multi-faceted United Nations peacekeeping today have stretched the world body's resources "to the limit of our capacity," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today in a renewed call for strategic reserves and on-call regional resources at a conference on peacekeeping and nation-building.

The United Nations has decided that it is not appropriate to reimburse Benon Sevan, former head of the now defunct multi-billion dollar Oil-for-Food programme for Iraq, for legal bills stemming from his appearance before an independent inquiry committee probing charges of misconduct and mismanagement, a UN spokesman said today.

Pointing to upcoming elections and subsequent national stability as the key issues facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended extending the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission there for another year and has called for troop deployment in two more provinces.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan today asked donors to support a special court set up in Cambodia with United Nations assistance to try ageing leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime accused of killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the country during the 1970s.

United Nations offices throughout the area hit by last December's tsunami are on alert after a new earthquake struck the west coast of Indonesia today, and though no tsunamis have been reported this time, the shocks are a wake-up call for the world to speed up an early-warning system for the region, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator said.