The government and the rebels in South Sudan, who have been involved in deadly clashes over the past month, have agreed to a ceasefire, reported mediators in Addis Ababa.

They said that the rivals are expected to sign the agreement on "cessation of hostilities and the question of the detainees" in the Ethiopian capital.

The head of the European Commission today gave a stern warning to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich to end the violence that has seen battles between protestors and police on the streets of Kiev, after the deaths of at least three people yesterday.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso warned Yanukovich that unless the crackdown against anti-government protestors ends, the European Union may be forced into action.

The authors of a newly released report on torture in Syria have compared the evidence they received to a “Nazi archive”, as talks between the Syrian opposition and the government are set to begin in Geneva.

Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, former lead prosecutor of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, said,

“It was like getting the keys to the Nazi archive”.

A newly released report by three eminent lawyers has documented new evidence that the Syrian state has been “systematically killing” approximately 11,000 prisoners.

The 31-page report, commissioned by Qatar who have been supportive of the Syrian opposition, examines thousands of images of dead prisoners which have been smuggled out of the country.

The bodies show “signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation and other forms of torture”, claimed the report.

The South Sudanese government has accused the UN peacekeeping mission in the country of hiding rebels and their arms at their camps, which are giving shelter to over 70,000 civilians.

The country’s president, Salva Kiir has hit out at the UN, saying it acted like a “parallel government” in South Sudan.

"We did not know that when the Unmiss was brought to South Sudan, they were brought as a parallel government with the government in South Sudan," Kiir said.

A United Nations official warned that the “seeds of genocide” were present in the Central African Republic, as the European Union looks set to deploy troops to the crisis hit region.

Speaking after a 5-day visit to the country, John Ging, director of operations for the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in a press conference,

The invitation for Iran to participate in talks on the Syrian conflict has been withdrawn by the UN after the Syrian opposition said it would withdraw from the conference in protest.

The Syrian National Coalition said that without Iran accepting that Bashar al-Assad needed to step down in order for the conflict to be resolved, no negotiations could be held with the country, which is arming Syrian troops and participating in the fighting.