Secretary-general Kofi Annan has accepted "with great regret" the decision of one of his most trusted advisers, Lakhdar Brahimi, to retire after more than a decade in hotspots from Afghanistan and Iraq to Haiti and Nepal, a UN spokesman said in New York.
The veteran Algerian diplomat will leave his post as special adviser to the secretary-general at the end of the year. Brahimi, 71, brought his diplomatic skills to the United Nations in 1994 after serving as Algeria's foreign minister from 1991-93.