New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called on all parties in troubled Madagascar to behave responsibly and carry out a "smooth transition through democratic means."

"This peaceful path can only be the result of transitional arrangement arrived at by consensus and enjoying wide support," Ban said in a statement.

New York  - The UN Security Council on Tuesday praised the European Union for a well-done mission in the region between Chad and the Central African Republic, where an estimated 500,000 refugees need protection and aid.

The EU mission ended its one-year mission on Sunday and was replaced by UN peacekeeping operation composed of 5,200 military troops, drawn mostly from the departing EU military components.

New York  - UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann launched yet another campaign on Tuesday against Western governments, urging them to stop demonizing Iran and its leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for wiping Israel off the map.

Miguel d'Escoto, a former Sandinista foreign minister of Nicaragua in the 1980s and a Roman Catholic Maryknoll priest, has advocated reform and "democratization" of the United Nations since he assumed leadership of the 192-nation assembly last September.

Brussels  - The European Union could boycott a planned United Nations conference on racism, set for April 20, because of alleged anti-Western and anti-Semitic references in draft documents, the bloc's presidency said Monday.

"The EU will probably send suggestions. If the conference papers are in line with that we will stay, otherwise there is a strong call to withdraw," Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, said after talks with EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

New York  - A United Nations peacekeeping mission will assume responsibility on Sunday of providing security to refugees and war-displaced people in eastern Chad and northeastern Central African Republic, the UN said Friday.

The UN mission, with 5,200 military troops and known as MINURCAT, will take over European Union troops posted in the past year at the region between Chad and CAR where tens of thousands have taken refuge from fighting in Sudan's Darfur and Chad.

Geneva - The situation in northern Sri Lanka is "desperate," United Nation's top human rights official Navi Pillay said Friday, criticizing both the government and the Tamil rebels.

"The current level of civilian casualties is truly shocking, and there are legitimate fears that the loss of life may reach catastrophic levels, if the fighting continues in this way," Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said.

New York  - The restoration of funding of United Nations population programmes by the Obama administration will help women, girls and their families around the world, the UN Population Fund said Thursday.

US President Barack Obama signed a 410-billion-dollar budget for the rest of the fiscal year on Wednesday that included restoring US contribution of 50 million dollars a year to the fund.

The Hague  - The Hague will host a United Nations conference on the future of Afghanistan at the end of the month, although it was unclear Wednesday whether or not Iran had been invited to attend.

The summit, to be chaired by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, will take place on March 31, on the theme of stabilizing the country.

A spokesman of the Dutch foreign affairs ministry on Wednesday could not confirm yet whether or not Iran had been invited to the summit.

Oslo  - Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon Wednesday said he believed the United Nations Millennium Development Goals can be achieved, while warning of the huge gaps between rich and poor.

In a speech at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen, western Norway, the crown prince said that "most people in the world earn less than five dollars a day."

Vienna - Bolivian President Evo Morales on Wednesday chewed a coca leaf at a United Nations drug conference in Vienna, underscoring his view that the plant should not be on the UN list of narcotic substances.

Morales was speaking at a conference of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which is expected to adopt an action plan Thursday to tackle the global drug problem in the coming decade, against the backdrop of limited progress over the last 10 years.

New York - Iran supplied arms to Syria in violation of a UN Security Council resolution banning arms transfer as part of measures against Iran's nuclear activities, the United States and Britain said Tuesday.

Details of the arms transfer to Syria were not made public, but the US and British ambassadors called for efforts to stop weapons deals between Tehran and Damascus.

US Ambassador Susan Rice said the 15-nation council should take action to end Iran's weapons procurement to Syria.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday Haiti can break the impasse created by natural disasters and poverty, but it must act because international assistance is time bound.

Ban said in capital Port-au-Prince before leaving for Washington that the UN mission in that country and the United States' relief programme, known as US HOPE II Act, are not indefinite.

New York  - The 13 relief organizations expelled by the Sudanese government last week provided 50 per cent of humanitarian assistance to civilians in need in Sudan's Darfur region, the top UN humanitarian coordinator said Monday.

John Holmes, the UN undersecretary general for emergency relief coordinator, said at UN headquarters in New York that neither Khartoum nor the UN or other non-governmental organizations can sufficiently provide assistance alone.

New York  - The United Nations envoy for Afghanistan was in Tehran on Monday to discuss economic cooperation among Central Asian nations and between Iran and Afghanistan, the UN said.

Kai Eide, the top UN representative in Afghanistan, addressed a high-level meeting in Tehran of the 10-nation Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), which is an inter-governmental group promoting mutual economic, technical and cultural support in Central Asia.

Geneva  - The sub-prime mortgage crisis has exposed the crisis in governments' housing policies and could still hit the middle classes, the United Nations' expert on urban planning said on Monday.

Sub-prime mortgages, given by lenders to people who could not afford them, are widely blamed for triggering the meltdown in US banks and the global liquidity crisis and economic downturn.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and former US president Bill Clinton flew Monday for a one-day visit to Haiti, which is struggling to rebuild from the devastation caused by successive hurricanes last year.

Ban was to fly back on Tuesday to Washington to meet with US President Barack Obama.

Ban said last week that his and Clinton's presence in the impoverished Caribbean nation would help the government of President Rene Preval to gain international assistance for economic recovery in one of the poorest country in the region.

Geneva - At least 4,011 people have died from cholera in Zimbabwe since an outbreak began last year, United Nations statistics showed Monday, with access to medical care still a major problem.

About 61 per cent of the dead were deemed community deaths, meaning the victims were unable to reach medical treatment.

A total of 89,018 cases have been reported, according to data from the World Health Organization, based in part on information from the Ministry of Health in Harare.

Geneva  - A representative of the United States addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council Wednesday for the first time since it pulled out of the body in the middle of last year.

The address was made following a pledge from Washington to re-engage with the council, which the previous administration of George W Bush shunned towards the end of his term.

Geneva  - The United Nations Refugee Agency said Friday that in recent weeks some 40,000 displaced Somalis have returned to the war ravaged capital Mogadishu as the areas elsewhere in the country where they sought refuge had become too violent and were being hit by drought.

"Somalis are between a rock and a hard place," said William Spindler, a spokesman for UNHCR.

The UN warned that it was "not encouraging returns to Mogadishu at this juncture, as the security situation is volatile and the conditions are certainly not conducive."

New York - A doctor from Egypt and a non-government organization from Nicaragua have won the 2009 United Nations Population Award for raising awareness on population issues, the UN Fund for Population said Tuesday.

Mahmoud Fathalla founded the Egyptian Fertility Care Society, one of the first family planning organizations in Egypt, in 1974, and has since been advising his government on issues related to population and health. He is a renowned doctor and professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Assiut University in Egypt.