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The United Nations envoy in Timor-Leste has said fugitive Timorese Major Alfredo Reinado and his followers, who are accused of involvement in last year’s deadly violence that rocked the tiny nation, bear ultimate responsibility for the weekend military operation launched against them by the International Security Forces (ISF) because they rejected the Government’s terms of surrender.

With almost 100,000 people in impoverished Nepal living with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today launched an awareness and prevention kit aimed at halting the spread of the disease, particularly among the under 40 age group, which are the most at risk.

The top United Nations humanitarian official, whose tenure began on 1 March, said today that he is eager to see first-hand the dire humanitarian situation in western Sudan, as well as visit Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR), which are both hosting refugees who have fled the war-torn Darfur region.

Describing the United Nations Department of Management as the “backbone” of the world body, the top UN management official today outlined her priorities for the coming year, namely implementing reforms to improve the organization’s efficiency and accountability, as she also stressed the need to maintain the highest standards of integrity.

Girls from around the world – including a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), an HIV-positive rape victim from Zambia, and a child-labourer from Nepal – have come together to share the experiences that made them activists at an event at United Nations Headquarters.

East and South-East Asian governments must do more to “reach the unreached” by providing improved schools and hospitals, as well as protecting the environment, participants at a United Nations regional forum said today at the close of a two-day meeting in Hanoi, Viet Nam.

A United Nations legal expert has called for a completely independent judiciary in the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives, stressing also that an appropriate police bill is “key” in preventing abuses, while calling as well for improved drug prevention and rehabilitation programmes as criminalization has failed.

Serbia and the ethnic Albanian government of Kosovo remain “diametrically opposed” following week-long talks on United Nations proposals for the future status of the Serbian province which the world body has run since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid ethnic fighting, the office of the senior UN envoy on the issue said today.

Evoking her own recollections of when Nelson Mandela, or Prisoner 46664, walked out of prison after 27 years, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro paid tribute to the founding president of post-apartheid South Africa at the unveiling of his portrait at UN Headquarters in New York.

Ibrahim Gambari of Nigeria, the former head of the United Nations Department for Political Affairs, was today named Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Advisor on the International Compact with Iraq and Other Political Issues.