New York  - Sudan said Thursday it will not allow the 13 humanitarian organizations expelled from the troubled Darfur region to resume their work there.

"It is not reversible because we did it for our national interests," Sudan's UN Ambassador Abdalmahmood Mohamad told reporters while the UN Security Council was holding a closed-door discussion on the situation in Darfur.

New York  - New Zealand's former Prime Minister Helen Clark was appointed on Thursday the administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), which holds the largest purse in the UN system to assist developing countries.

Clark, who will replace Kermal Dervis of Turkey, was selected from a short list compiled by a senior appointment panel headed by Deputy Secretary General Asha Rose Migiro.

New York  - Humanitarian workers and United Nations personnel on diplomatic missions have become prime targets for kidnapping, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday on the International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members.

Nineteen UN staff members have been arrested, detained or are missing, Ban said, urging governments and non-government organizations to help locate and free them.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday named Peter W Galbraith, a US expert on arms control, as deputy chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan.

Galbraith will replace Christopher Alexander of Canada to work in war-torn Afghanistan, where NATO and non-NATO countries maintain 55,000 military personnel and the US has more than 10,000 troops to fight terrorism, the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

New York - The United Nations on Wednesday expressed concern about the lack of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the increasing violence two months after Israel declared a unilateral end to hostilities.

UN Undersecretary General for Political Affairs B Lynn Pascoe said the Middle East is faced with a "worrying situation of impasse and uncertainty."

New York  - The United Nations said Tuesday that it has agreed with the Sudanese government to assess the humanitarian situation in Darfur and begin stop-gap relief programmes.

The new measures follow Sudan's expulsion of 13 international relief organizations as a knee-jerk reaction to the indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur conflict by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC also issued a warrant to arrest al-Bashir.