East Timorese soldiers opened fire today on unarmed police in the capital Dili, killing nine and wounding 27, the UN spokesman said.

UN peacekeepers battled attackers today before withdrawing from a western Ivory Coast town along with military observers and other UN staff.

United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan has cancelled a trip to Iran in response to increasing tension over the Iranian president’s call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

The United Nations has suspended a subsidiary of British catering giant Compass as a supplier for the world body amid an investigation into a food-for-peacekeepers contract scandal.

US and UN officials urged the Shiite-led government to reverse last-minute changes to voting rules for a referendum on Iraq’s new constitution and head off a threatened Sunni boycott.

Pressure is mounting on the United Nations nuclear agency to report Iran to the Security Council as it prepares for an emergency meeting today to ease a stand-off with the Tehran regime.

China is objecting to a US and British demand for a Security Council briefing on a United Nations report condemning Zimbabwe’s slum clearance.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan fired staff member Joseph Stephanides for wrongdoing in the oil-for-food scandal, a UN spokesman said today – the first dismissal stemming from alleged corruption in the multibillion-dollar programme.

Two US soldiers and three Iraqis were killed in separate bomb attacks today, a day after UN security experts arrived in the capital to study the possible return of its international staff.

Three Iraqis were killed when a truck bomb exploded soon after a US patrol passed by as two UN security experts arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad to study the possible return of international staff.