Iraq remains his 'biggest regret'

Outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said he believed a "turning point" had now been reached in the situation in Darfur and the region was not facing "another false dawn."

"For the first time we were all together in one room and we all agreed," he said of the agreement reached in Addis Ababa last week when the Sudanese Government agreed to accept a hybrid force to help maintain peace in the region.

Annan told a farewell press conference in Geneva, he expected the Sudanese Government to come back on the details of the number of troops and police at any time.

"I am hopeful," he said. "What is important is that we press ahead with immediate implementation as we can not afford a gap, a vacuum at the end of the year."

In Iraq, which he described as his "biggest regret" in his ten years in office, only a revised constitution could unite the country and offered the only way out for the US which was "trapped in Iraq."

"It can not stay and it can not leave. There are those who say its presence is a problem and those who say if they leave precipitously the situation will get worse." He described the UN failure to stop the war in Iraq as his "biggest regret" during his ten years in office.

He expressed disappointment that in three special sessions to date the new Human Rights Council, which succeeded the Human Rights Commission, had singled out Israel and the Palestinian issue and at the expense of problems such as Darfur.

"The expectation was that it would take a broad view and look at as many countries as possible," he said. "Some wonder what is this council doing, don't they have a sense of fair play.

I hope as we move forward they will broaden their work and look at other countries," he said.Annan is due to leave office at the end of the year.

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