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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Envoy for Darfur has arrived in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum on the second stage of a mission promoting United Nations efforts to find a permanent solution to a conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced some 2.5 million others in Darfur.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today named Major General Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz of Brazil as the new Force Commander of the peacekeeping UN Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

More than 20,000 people have fled fighting between the Sri Lankan Government and Tamil separatists in the Indian Ocean island’s eastern costal strip of Vaharai in the past three weeks, but despite reaching relative safety they still they face many problems and an uncertain future, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

While stressing the importance of last year’s historic elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the first held there in more than 40 years, two top United Nations officials today told the Security Council that continued international involvement is crucial to stability not only in the massive country but for the whole region.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concern over the United States air strikes on Somalia, particularly their humanitarian impact, his spokesperson said today, adding that the world body is seeking more information on the attacks while also assessing the possibility of renewing emergency assistance to the strife-torn country and the thousands who need help at the border with Kenya.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) plans to feed nearly 2 million people in southern Sudan this year, the agency said in a statement today marking the second anniversary of a peace accord that ended 21 years of war between Government and rebel forces.

A United Nations-backed campaign to fight malaria in Africa has received its first-ever challenge grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a pledge to match dollar for dollar up to $3 million in individual contributions to the programme to fight a disease that kills more than 1 million people every year, mostly children under five.

Condemning the latest attacks on civilians in strife-torn Sri Lanka, which left more than 20 dead and dozens maimed, the United Nations office on the island today called for their immediate protection and warned of worsening conditions in the east, where thousands of people remain trapped by the fighting between the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

A senior United Nations official in Afghanistan today called on the Afghan and Pakistani governments to end their mutual recriminations and cooperate in fighting the Taliban insurgency in the south of the war-torn country, saying it is being fuelled from both sides of the border and urging greater action against the rebellion in Pakistan itself.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the Government and political leaders of Guinea-Bissau to exercise utmost restraint and focus on development and reconciliation amid heightened tensions following the killing of the small West African country’s former Navy Chief.