New York  - United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Monday called for the release of two Canadian diplomats kidnapped in Niger last December, following the release over the weekend of a local staff member who was held hostage with them.

The captors set free Soumana Mounkaila, a driver who was with former Canadian ambassador to the UN Robert Fowler and his aide Louis Guay when they were abducted on December 14, 2008, while riding in a UN vehicle.

Kathmandu  - The United Nations' high commissioner for human rights said Sunday that she has asked the Nepalese government for an extension of term for the UN human rights office in Nepal.

Navanethem Pillay said she asked Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to extend the terms of the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights-Nepal by another three years after the current term expires in June.

"I believe the work of my office will support Nepal's efforts to address the remaining challenges to the peace process and the human rights issues that were both a cause and the consequence of the conflict," the UN rights chief said at the end of a visit to the country.

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will attend next week in Moscow a conference of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, called to discuss Afghanistan's growing threat to regional security, the UN said Thursday.

The Moscow conference on March 27 "will focus on the impact that the situation in Afghanistan is having on its neighbouring states," the UN said.

New York  - The world's 20 most advanced economies should discuss investment of 1 per cent of global gross domestic product - about 750 billion dollars - into five sectors to build an environmentally sustainable global economy, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said Thursday.

Such an amount could finance a "Global Green New Deal," drawing on the idea of the New Deal launched by US president Franklin D Roosevelt to help put an end to the Great Depression in the 1930s.

United Nations, Mar. 19 : Pakistan has called for abolishing the `veto' power of five major nations in the UN Security Council.

Pakistan's Ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, termed the privilege enjoyed by the United States, Britain, France, China, and Russia as `non democratic' and described it as being against the principles of other member countries.

"Experience tells us that veto impacts negatively on the effectiveness and efficiency of the Council," The Nation quoted Haroon, as saying.

Washington - The United States on Wednesday announced its support for a French-sponsored United Nations General Assembly declaration to expand universal recognition of human rights for homosexuals and decriminalize homosexuality worldwide.

The US "is pleased to join the other 66 UN member states who have declared their support of this statement that condemns human-rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity wherever they occur," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.