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An Afghan charged with converting from Islam to Christianity in a court case that threatened to strain the war-torn country’s relations with the international community has asked for asylum in another country, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported today.

With many of its members represented by Government ministers, the United Nations Security Council, along with Secretary-General Kofi Annan, called for sustained international support to the efforts of Haitian President-elect René Préval to fight instability and poverty in his country, as they warmly welcomed him to their midst.

In the run-up to October’s elections in divided Côte d’Ivoire, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has repeated his call that almost 4,000 extra troops and police be sent to the UN mission there, saying they were “crucial” both to shore up the fledgling peace process and to prevent an already precarious security situation from getting worse and spreading to neighbouring Liberia.

Some 170,000 southern Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda, representing over half those who fled the bloody, 21-year civil war, are now able to go home after a repatriation agreement was signed today in the Ugandan capital with the United Nations refugee agency.

Research centres and international agencies today joined forces to boost technical and policy skills for saving biodiversity in developing countries under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Following separate attacks earlier this month on United Nations offices in southern Sudan, one of which killed a local guard, the senior UN envoy to the strife-torn country will travel to the affected areas later this week, before leaving for Nigeria to meet the parties involved in the peace talks over the bloody conflict in Darfur, a UN spokesman said today.

The much-criticized United Nations Human Rights Commission ended its last meeting today after adopting a resolution to transfer all its work to the recently created and stronger Human Rights Council, which is scheduled to hold its first meeting on 19 June in Geneva after the U.N. General Assembly votes on its members in May.

A senior United Nations Lebanon holding talks in Beirut today with the country's officials hailed their integrated approach to the presence of Palestinian militias.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today welcomed the decision of the European Union to start planning and preparation for possible support to the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC).

The top United Nations envoy for faction-riven Somalia today appealed to the leaders of warring parties in Mogadishu, the capital, to halt their fighting and allow families trapped in the crossfire to return safely to their homes.