Ban Ki

The newly appointed United Nations special adviser on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide (photo), will hold a joint meeting with Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish-Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu in Nicosia on September 17.

Eide revealed that the meeting would take place after holding separate talks with the two men on Friday.

A joint mission of the United Nations and the global anti-chemical arms watchdog that has overseen the destruction of Syria's toxic gas stocks will shut down on Sept. 30 though a successor unit will continue investigating, the U.N. chief said.

NEW YORK - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged the Kosovo authorities and the EU to establish, by early 2015 at the latest, a special court to deal with war crimes committed in Kosovo-Metohija by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (pictured at the UN with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras last August) has lent his support to the second Athens Forum 2014, titled “Democracy Under Pressure,” which is being co-hosted by Kathimerini and the International New York Times.

Israeli shelling killed eight people in Gaza on Aug. 1 just hours into a three-day truce, medics said, as a diplomatic push for a more durable end to the bloodshed gained pace.

The skies over Gaza initially fell silent after the humanitarian truce came into effect at at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT), the latest and longest of several agreed since the conflict broke out on July 8.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that diplomacy to end the Gaza bloodshed has made progress, but warned more time was needed.
      
"We have certainly made some steps forward, but there is still work to be done," Kerry said in Jerusalem as he started a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
      

Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura will be the new U.N. mediator for Syria, taking on the Herculean task of finding a political solution to the devastating civil war, diplomats say.

BELGRADE - Serbia is one of the ten highest-ranking European countries takng part in the UN peacekeeping missions around the world, while in the Western Balkans it is the leader in this respect, said Peter Due, head of the UN Office in Belgrade and a representative of the Secretary-General UN Ban Ki -moon in charge of the region.

The destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal will not be completed before a June 30 deadline agreed after Washington threatened air strikes last year, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has said.

An April 27 deadline for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons to international monitors also expired with Damascus holding around eight percent of its declared material.

NEW YORK - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accepted on Tuesday the invitation by Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic to take part in an international donor conference to raise funds for Serbia which was hit by disastrous floods last week, the Serbian president's delegation told Tanjug.