New York - The world is well prepared to beat back any major influenza pandemic with 148 countries having made contingency plans to deal with the disease, the United Nations and the World Bank said Tuesday.

"Considering that pandemic preparedness was largely unaddressed by the world's nations three years ago, the widespread awareness and action seen today is a major achievement," said David Nabarro, the UN system influenza coordinator.

New York - Just days after US and European leaders agreed to an emergency economic summit on US soil, the United Nations Monday announced the creation of a task force to review the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the worst global finance meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is to head the group, the Interactive Panel on the Global Financial Crisis, which was to hold its first meeting October 30 at UN headquarters in New York, said Miguel d'Escoto, the president of the UN General Assembly.

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned Monday the killing of two aid workers in Somalia and another in Afghanistan in the past three days, saying that he was alarmed by the targeting of people trying to help the poor.

Unknown gunmen shot and killed the head of UNICEF's water and sanitation programme in Somalia on Sunday, three days after an aid worker of the World Food Programme was killed in the central Somali town of Merka.

Nairobi - Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan has backed calls for an international tribunal to try people accused of involvement in Kenya's post-election violence.

A commission led by Justice Philip Waki last week said that prominent politicians and businessmen helped organize ethnically based violence.

He gave an envelope containing the names of the accused to Annan, who said he would hand it over to the authorities at the appropriate time.

"I think it is important that the government acts on it," Annan told the BBC. "The victims demand justice too."

Mogadishu - Unknown Somali gunmen have killed a senior worke

Paris - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has offered to have the United Nations host an international summit on reforming the global finance system, the online version of the French daily Le Figaro reported Saturday.

In a letter to the French president and current head of the European Union, Ban said that he "firmly" supported Sarkozy's call for an international conference to reform the global finance system and proposed holding it at UN headquarters in New York, no later than early December.