Oslo  - The United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan aired disappointment Thursday over the European Union's efforts to train more police officers in Afghanistan and improve Afghanistan's justice system.

"I had hoped the EU would have been more active at an earlier stage," UN envoy Kai Eide said in an interview Thursday with Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

"A year ago they said they would raise the number of police trainers from 200 to 400, but I believe they still have not reached 200," Eide added.

"It is a pity that the Americans have had to carry the main burden for this too," he said.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will visit several African nations starting next week, including South Africa and Tanzania for the first time since he assumed the UN leadership in 2007, the UN said Wednesday.

Ban will also attend the March 2 international conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt organized to support the Palestinian people in and the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

The conference will be co-chaired by Egypt and Norway.

Yangon  - United Nations special human rights envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana visited Myanmar's junta headquarters of Naypyitaw Wednesday, for talks likely to concentrate on the country's estimated 2,100 political prisoners.

UN officials said it was not known which generals Quintana would meet in Naypyitaw, 350 kilometres north of Yangon. He is expected to at least meet with Prime Minister General Thein Sein, who also met with UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari on an official visit last month.

Nairobi - The United Nations Tuesday warned that the global food crisis could be intensified dramatically by climate change as environment ministers from across the world gathered in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

A report presented to over 100 environment minsters at a meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said that by 2050 there could be 25 per cent less food produced worldwide.

Food prices could rise by as much as 50 per cent within a few decades, causing even more misery for the poor, who can spend up to
90 per cent of their income on food, the report said.

Nairobi - The head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other environmental experts Monday called for an urgent transition to a green economy as the best way to pull the world out of global recession in a sustainable manner.

Speaking as an international conference of over 100 environment ministers got underway in Nairobi, Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director and UN Under-Secretary General, said that stimulus packages designed to kick start ailing economies should dedicate serious investment to green technologies.

Islamabad  - Pakistani government on Saturday dismissed the demands of the captors of a United Nation's official as unrealistic but expressed willingness to negotiate with them.

A separatist group in Pakistan's south-western Balochistan province set a 72-hours deadline on Friday to kill John Solecki, the local head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, if 141 women held in the torture cells of country's intelligence agencies were not freed.

The Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF), a secular and nationalist guerrilla organization seeking independence from Pakistan, also demanded the release of 6,000 more political prisoners.