Annan Tuesday told reporters at U.N. World Headquarters in New York that was the reason he brought Ban to Monday's Security Council session on Darfur.

"We are following the Middle East situation closely, including Lebanon," Annan said at his end-of-term news conference. "There will be no break in handling of Darfur."

After the Monday meeting it was learned Annan had sent a senior adviser to Khartoum for talks with Sudan's President Omar el-Bashir.

The emergency mission of Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah is to go into detail about recent agreements on ending conflict in Darfur.

Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Ould-Abdallah should arrive Wednesday in Sudan's capital of Khartoum. The envoy and the president are expected to clarify details of previous agreements reached in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the African Union, Sudan and the United Nations agreed to provide extra support to the current African Union Mission in Sudan.

It is hoped an AU-U.N. peacekeeping hybrid mission would emerge, wielding a force of about 20,000 personnel, compared to the current AMIS 7,000 troops.

To bridge the gap between Ould-Abdallah's "one off" mission and Ban's appointment of a special representative for Darfur, the former Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson will serve as an interim special representative who will take up the post after the first of the year.

"Ban and I also agreed (on) Jan Eliasson," Annan said at the Tuesday session with reporters, explaining the highly respected Swedish diplomat would clarify issues with Sudan's government and solicit support from governments in the region so the United Nations can have forces on the ground early next year.

"I can not overstate the urgency of the deteriorating situation as we speak," the secretary-general said. "More humanitarian workers were forced to flee over the weekend and more people are dying every day and more will continue to die."

He renewed a warning to Khartoum, saying "The government of Sudan should be in no doubt the world will hold" Sudanese leaders "responsible for their actions."

The secretary-general said Sudan "has come under tremendous pressure from the international community" to send in troops to help.

"Have we done all that we could to pressure the government of Sudan to do what it has to do? We used political pressure, economic sanctions, isolation and the last resort would be use of force," Annan said. "We brought to bear all the pressure we have to press the government to bend and this is something we discussed in council and we will see what happens."

Asked about the top achievements and worst moments of his 10-year tenure, the secretary-general said, "The worst moment was the Iraq war which as an organization we couldn't stop and I really did everything I could to try to see if we could stop it."

Among the achievements, he cited U.N. human rights efforts, the war against inequality both between and within states and the battle for development as epitomized by the Millennium Development Goals that seek to slash a host of social ills, such as extreme hunger and poverty, infant and maternal mortality and lack of access to education and health care, all by 2015.

He also appealed for the United Nations not to be judged by the Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal. An Independent Inquiry Committee ultimately found mismanagement on the part of the administration and corruption largely involving private companies in connection with the scheme to allow the sanctions-bound regime of Saddam Hussein to sell oil and use a portion of the revenues to purchase food and humanitarian supplies.

"I think that when historians look at the records they will draw the conclusion that, yes, there was mismanagement and there may have been several U.N. staff members engaged but the scandal, if any, was in the capitals and with the 2,200 companies that made a deal with Saddam behind our backs and of course I hope the historians will realize that the U.N. is more than oil-for-food," he said.

The United Nations "coordinates tsunami (relief for the Indian Ocean disaster of December 2004), a United Nations that deals with the Kashmir earthquake (of 2005), a United Nations that is pushing for equality and fighting to implement the Millennium Development Goals, a United Nations that is fighting for human dignity and the rights of others," he said.

"So please don't generalize from the particular," the secretary-general said.

Beyond the Iraq war Annan said the 2003 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed 22 people, including his top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

"They were not just colleagues, they were true friends and I think nothing had hit me as much as almost the loss of my twin sister," he said.

Related Links
Out Of Africa