Colombian rebels call on Santos to save peace talks

HAVANA (Reuters) - Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels charged on Friday that the hostile attitude of President Juan Manuel Santos threatened peace negotiations under way in Havana and urged him to salvage the talks, in their harshest criticisms since talks began three months ago.

Santos infuriated the rebels earlier this week when he said they should be responsible for compensating the of thousands of farmers who were forced to flee their lands during the region's longest and only remaining guerilla war.

The FARC considers itself the representative of Colombia's rural poor in their conflicts with big landlords and foreign mining and oil companies.

"It is true that at the negotiating table there has been important progress made, but the official attitudes ... threaten to sink them in a swamp. Let's get it out of there now, Santos," said a statement by FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, alias Timoleon Jimenez, distributed in Havana as the talks resumed. "Let's save it," he added.

Earlier this week the FARC also branded the Santos government as a "Pinocchio" for promising to set aside a large swath of land for the dispossessed.

Responding to the rebel statement, Colombian Interior Minister Fernando Carrillo told journalists in Bogota, "It's in their hands to pull it out of the swamp. Let them stop kidnapping and attacking Colombians."

Throughout the negotiations both parties have questioned the other's sincerity and condemned bombings, kidnappings and military actions that have increased in intensity in recent weeks.

At the same time the government, FARC and their Cuban and Norwegian facilitators have said progress was being made at the negotiating table, without providing any details.

The parties are trying to end a war that dates to the FARC's formation in 1964 as a communist agrarian reform movement fighting Colombia's long history of social inequality and the concentration of land in the hands of a few.

Tens of thousands of people have died and millions more have been displaced in the war, Latin America's longest running insurgency and a vestige of the Cold War.

The talks are built on a five-point agenda addressing the issues that provoked and prolonged the war, starting with land reform and rural development.

The FARC has proposed giving a broad swath of Colombia to the poor, but the government has said land will not be taken from private owners.

Remaining issues include FARC's future political participation, ending the conflict, compensation for victims of the war, and drug trafficking, which has helped fund the group for years.

(Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by David Adams and Vicki Allen)

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Vatican denies sinister motives behind diplomat's transfer

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican denied on Friday that Pope Benedict's decision to send a senior official to a new post in Latin America was linked to a secret report about leaked papal papers.

Since Benedict announced his resignation on February 11, Italian newspapers have been full of rumors about conspiracies, secret reports and lobbies in the Vatican that they say pushed the pope to abdicate.

Some reports hinted there were sinister motives behind the pope's decision to promote Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, an Italian who holds a post roughly equivalent to deputy foreign minister, to be the Vatican's new ambassador to Colombia.

The Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said the suggestion that the pope had made the appointment to get Balestrero out of the Vatican was "absurd, totally without foundation".

Lombardi said the appointment had been decided weeks ago and that the Vatican had waited for the Colombian government's official agreement before announcing it.

The pope has announced that he will step down on February 28, becoming the first pontiff to abdicate in some six centuries.

The 85-year-old Benedict said his failing health no longer enabled him to run the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church as he would like.

Italy's Repubblica newspaper has run a series of unsourced stories about the alleged contents of a secret report prepared for the pope by a commission of three cardinals who investigated the so-called Vatileaks scandal last year.

In that scandal, Paolo Gabriele, the pope's butler, was convicted of stealing personal papal documents and leaking them to the media.

The documents alleged corruption in the Vatican and infighting over the running of its bank, which has been at the heart of a series of scandals in past decades.

The Italian media stories suggested Balestrero was mentioned in the cardinals' report, which was handed to the pope and is still secret.

Balestrero was head of the Vatican's delegation to Moneyval, the Council of Europe's committee that evaluates how countries are applying international standards on financial transparency.

The Vatican, a sovereign city-state surrounded by Rome, subjected itself to Moneyval's investigations in an attempt to achieve full financial transparency and put its scandal-tinged financial past behind it.

The Moneyval report, issued last July, gave the Vatican an overall passing grade but said it had to made improvements in several areas, including the management at its bank, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

The Vatican has said it is willing to adhere to all of Moneyval's recommendations.

Bogota is one of the most prestigious posts in Latin America for a Vatican diplomat because it is the headquarters of CELAM, the umbrella group for all of the continent's bishops conferences.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Israeli forces, Palestinians clash throughout West Bank

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian protesters throughout the occupied West Bank on Friday, capping a week of violence amid a hunger strike by four Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Tension and anticipation is rising in the West Bank a month before U.S. President Barack Obama is due to visit Jerusalem and Ramallah, though he has announced no concrete plans to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks stalled for three years.

From the precincts of Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, both one of Islam's holiest sites and revered by Jews as the site of their Biblical temple, youths threw stones at Israeli police after Friday prayers.

Dozens of Israeli officers briefly entered the politically sensitive compound. Witnesses said officers fired tear gas and threw percussion grenades at the demonstrators as bystanders and elderly worshippers ran for cover.

A police spokesman said no tear gas was fired, but that protesters were throwing firecrackers.

The old city of Hebron, a bitterly contested city in the southern West Bank sown heavily with Israeli settlers, echoed with percussion grenades hurled by Israeli forces at some 1,500 Palestinian protesters.

At a military checkpoint near the northern city of Nablus and outside a military prison in the central West Bank, Israeli forces worked to clear away makeshift roadblocks and fired rubber bullets towards stone-throwing Palestinians.

There were dozens of light injuries from gas inhalation and rubber and aluminum bullets, witnesses said.

Palestinians seek statehood in territories Israel captured in a 1967 war. Peace talks broke down in 2010 over Palestinian objections to Israel expanding settlements on occupied land. Israel has called for resuming the talks without preconditions.

HUNGER STRIKERS IN LIMBO

The status of four hunger-striking Palestinian detainees was in limbo as Israeli civilian courts failed to rule definitively in hearings held for two of them this week, referring their multi-decade sentences back to military courts.

Israel convicted the men of taking part in militant attacks and freed them along with hundreds of other prisoners in a 2011 swap for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held in Hamas-ruled Gaza for five years, only to re-arrest them soon afterward.

Lawyers and officials representing the men, who were accused by Israel of violating the terms of their release, say their cases are locked in a legal maze and Palestinian officials hope Egyptian mediation could convince Israel to free them.

"Our prisoners ...(on) hunger strike are engaging in a true battle, a battle of glory against the tyrant," said Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza's Hamas prime minister. "No one of us will forget the prisoners. No one would enjoy being with his children at home as long as those heroes continued to suffer in jails."

The hunger strikers have told representatives of an independent Israeli medical group, Physicians for Human Rights, that they are taking water but refusing medicines and nutrients.

There is little exact information on the health of the strikers, whose on-off hunger strikes have ranged from around 80 to over 200 days, as they have repeatedly refused treatment and been denied regular access to independent doctors.

Israel holds around 4,700 Palestinians in its prison on charges ranging from throwing stones to killing Israelis.

Palestinians widely regard them as heroes of their national struggle against Israel and want them all freed.

(Reporting By Noah Browning; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Panetta, NATO partner, differ on troop numbers

BRUSSELS (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his NATO counterparts are considering leaving 8,000 to 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but it was unclear how much of that force would be American, U.S. officials said Friday.

A dispute flared, but was quickly dissipated at the NATO defense ministers gathering here to discuss the endgame of the 11-year-old war in Afghanistan.

German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters that a post-2014 force of 8,000 to 10,000 American troops would remain in Afghanistan. Panetta denied that, saying the force of 8,000 to 12,000 would be international and the makeup was still under discussion.

Within hours, de Maiziere said his comments were "misleading," and that the force remaining would be international.

President Barack Obama has said that the last combat troops will leave Afghanistan on Dec. 31, 2014, leaving the bulk of the country's security in the hands of the Afghans.

Panetta, who will leave Obama's Cabinet when his successor is confirmed, told reporters that he and the NATO partners talked about ranges of options for the post-2014 troop force. And he said the figures reflected contributions that other nations would make, in addition to the United States.

"There's no question in the current budget environment, with deep cuts in European defense spending and the kind of political gridlock that we see in the United States now with regards to our own budget, is putting at risk our ability to effectively act together," he said. "As I prepare to step down as secretary of defense, I do fear that the alliance will soon be, if it is not already, stretched too thin."

His spokesman, George Little, told reporters that the range for an international force was 8,000 to 12,000, and that Obama had not yet decided on the size of the post-2014 force in Afghanistan.

"We will continue to discuss with allies and the Afghans how we can best carry out two basic missions: targeting the remnants of al-Qaida and its affiliates, and training and equipping Afghan forces," he said.

Panetta said officials are planning to leave troops in all sectors of the country as well as in Kabul. Pentagon officials have said the military has mapped out plans to carry on its mission of training and advising the Afghan forces and also leave a small counterterrorism force to battle insurgents.

When asked about troop numbers, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters that no decision had yet been made.

The Obama administration is considering a plan to maintain 352,000 Afghan troops for the next five years as part of an effort to maintain security and help convince Afghanistan that America and its allies will not abandon it once combat troops leave in 2014, senior alliance officials said Thursday. NATO officials are also widely considering that option.

Such a change, if NATO endorses it, could increase the costs to the U.S. and allies by more than $2 billion a year, at a time when most are struggling with budget cuts and fiscal woes. Last May, NATO agreed to underwrite an Afghan force of about 230,000, at a cost of about $4.1 billion a year after 2014. It costs about $6.5 billion this year to fund the current Afghan force of 352,000, and the U.S. is providing about $5.7 billion of that.

Panetta said Friday that he can defend that spending to Congress because it would give the U.S. more flexibility and savings as it withdraws troops from Afghanistan.

Maintaining the larger troop strength could bolster the confidence of the Afghan forces and make it clear that NATO is committed to an enduring relationship with Afghanistan, a senior NATO official said.

In private meetings with other defense ministers, Panetta warned allies that Washington's fiscal impasse will have repercussions abroad, as impending budget cuts force the military to scale back its training and presence overseas.

Many of his meetings, however, centered on the plans to wind down the war in Afghanistan, including the withdrawal of 34,000 U.S. troops over the next year and the transfer of security responsibilities to the Afghan forces.

According to an Obama administration official, the Pentagon plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to about 60,500 by the end of May; then to 52,500 by November, keeping a relatively stable number of troops there during the peak fighting season. The sharpest cuts in U.S. troop strength will come over the winter months as the remaining 20,500 leave after the main fighting season. There currently are about 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Panetta acknowledged those ranges of numbers on Friday, but also added that the U.S. would maintain the 34,000 through the Afghan elections, then withdraw the final combat troops toward the end of 2014.

The administration officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the numbers publicly.

This is Panetta's fifth visit to Brussels for a NATO meeting — a trip he never intended to take. Expectations were that defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, would be confirmed by the Senate last week and he would travel to the meeting.

Hagel's nomination stalled, however, as it got caught up in senators' complaints about the attack in Benghazi, which left four Americans dead, including the ambassador. There are indications now that Hagel has support from enough senators to be confirmed next week.

___

Associated Press writers Don Melvin and Julie Pace contributed to this report.

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Lolita C. Baldor can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lbaldor

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Five killed in Islamist car bomb attacks in north Mali

GAO, Mali (Reuters) - Five people were killed in two car bomb attacks by Islamists on pro-autonomy MNLA Tuareg rebels in a remote Malian town bordering Algeria, a spokesman for the fighters operating said on Friday.

The attacks in In Khalil, some 1,700 km (1,050 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, came a day after a car bomb killed two people in Kidal and French and Malian troops killed 15 Islamists on the streets of Gao.

Violence in northern Mali's towns underscore the risk of French and African forces becoming entangled in a messy guerrilla war as they try to help Mali's weak army counter bombings and raids by al Qaeda-linked rebels.

Moussa Ag Assarid, a Paris-based representative of the MNLA, said suspected Islamists had first tried to drive into a building, but the car was destroyed by fighters ahead of impact.

A second car then drove into the group's local operations centre and exploded.

Aside from the two bombers, Ag Assarid said three MNLA fighters were killed and three others wounded. It was not possible to independently verify the attack.

The MNLA swept across northern Mali in April, taking advantage of a power vacuum left by a coup in Bamako. But its revolt was eclipsed by a loose alliance of Islamist jihadists, including al Qaeda's North African wing, AQIM.

France is five weeks into an offensive to clear Islamist fighters from Mali's north, which Paris said risked becoming a springboard for attacks on the region and the West.

In the meantime, the MNLA says it has retaken control of Kidal and small towns around the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, where many Islamists are believed to be hiding near the Algeria border.

France, which has established close links with Tuareg rebels on the ground, has set up a base at Kidal's airport and has kept a low profile in the town.

In Gao, the hub for French and Malian military operations in Mali's north, government troops carried out house-to-house searches on Friday after a day of fighting in which Paris said 15 Islamists were killed.

(Reporting by Joe Penney and Cheick Diouara; Additional reporting by Nicholas Vinocur in Paris and John Irish in Dakar; Writing by John Irish; Editing by David Lewis and Jeremy Laurence)

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Bulgaria headed for early election by mid-May

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's president will appoint a caretaker government ahead of a parliamentary election by mid-May after protests toppled the austerity-minded cabinet of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, the president said on Friday.

The resignation of Borisov's rightist government has failed to quell public anger over high utility bills, and more protests are planned on Friday evening, as well as over the weekend.

President Rosen Plevneliev said major political parties - including Borisov's GERB and their rivals the Socialists - declined the chance to form a new government and the poll will be brought forward from its previously planned date in July.

"We are heading towards an interim government. We have agreed that the possible timeline for next elections will be the end of April until the middle of May," Plevneliev told reporters after consultation with political parties.

The president will now have to appoint a caretaker administration, which he said would focus on ensuring free elections, possibly next week.

Growing public frustration at the government's failure to boost living standards in the EU's poorest member state boiled over into bloody protests this month.

Many in the Black Sea state of 7.3 million are also angered by Borisov's failure to make good on his 2009 election pledge to stamp out endemic corruption and reform inefficient healthcare and education systems.

(Additional reporting by Angel Krasimirov; Editing by Jason Webb)

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Pistorius wins release on $113,000 bail

PRETORIA (Reuters) - A South African court granted bail on Friday to Oscar Pistorius, charged with the murder of his girlfriend on Valentine's Day, after his lawyers argued the "Blade Runner" was too famous to flee justice.

The decision by Magistrate Desmond Nair drew cheers from the Paralympics star's family and supporters. Pistorius himself was unmoved, in marked contrast to the rest of the week-long hearing when he repeatedly broke down in tears.

Nair set bail at 1 million rand ($113,000) and postponed the case until June 4. Pistorius would be released only when the court receives 100,000 rand in cash, he added.

Less than an hour later, a silver Land Rover believed to be carrying Pistorius left the court compound and sped off through the capital, pursued by members of the media on motorcycles.

Pistorius, 26, was also ordered to hand over firearms and his two South African passports, avoid his home and all witnesses in the case, report to a police station twice a week and to abstain from drinking alcohol.

The decision followed a week of dramatic testimony about how the athlete shot dead model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp at his luxury home near Pretoria in the early hours of February 14.

Prosecutors said Pistorius committed premeditated murder when he fired four shots into a locked toilet door, hitting his girlfriend cowering on the other side. Steenkamp, 29, suffered gunshot wounds to her head, hip and arm.

Pistorius said the killing was a tragic mistake, saying he had mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder - a possibility in crime-ridden South Africa - and opened fire in a blind panic.

However, in delivering his nearly two-hour bail ruling, Nair said there were a number of "improbabilities" in Pistorius's version of events, read out to the court in an affidavit by his lawyer, Barry Roux.

"I have difficulty in appreciating why the accused would not seek to ascertain who exactly was in the toilet," Nair said. "I also have difficulty in appreciating why the deceased would not have screamed back from the toilet."

By local standards, the bail conditions are onerous but it remains to be seen if they appease opposition to the decision from groups campaigning against the violence against women that is endemic in South Africa.

"We are saddened because women are being killed in this country," said Jacqui Mofokeng, a spokeswoman for the ruling African National Congress' Women's League, whose members stood outside the court this week with banners saying "Rot in jail".

TO FAMOUS TO RUN

However, Nair said he was ultimately making his decision in the "interests of justice" and that the prosecution, who suffered a setback when the lead investigator withered under cross-examination by Roux, had failed to show Pistorius was either a flight risk or a threat to the public.

Roux stressed that the Olympic and Paralympic runner's global fame made it impossible for him to evade justice by skipping bail and leaving the country.

"He can never go anywhere unnoticed," Roux told the court.

Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated in infancy forcing him to race on carbon fiber "blades", faces life in prison if convicted of premeditated murder.

Prosecutors had portrayed him as a cold-blooded killer and said they were confident that their case, which will have to rely heavily on forensics, would stand up to scrutiny at a full trial.

"We are going to make sure that we get enough evidence to get through this case during trial time," a spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority told reporters.

In court, lead prosecutor Gerrie Nel was scornful of Pistorius's inability to contain his emotions. "I shoot and I think my career is over and I cry. I come to court and I cry because I feel sorry for myself," Nel said.

"DEEPLY IN LOVE"

In his affidavit, Pistorius said he was "deeply in love" with Steenkamp, and Roux said his client had no motive for the killing.

Pistorius contends he reached for a 9-mm pistol under his bed because he felt particularly vulnerable without his prosthetic limbs.

According to police, witnesses heard gunshots and screams from the athlete's home. The community is surrounded by 3-m- (yard-) high stone walls and topped with an electric fence.

In a magazine interview a week before her death, published on Friday, Steenkamp spoke about her three-month-old relationship with Pistorius.

"I absolutely adore Oscar. I respect and admire him so much," she told celebrity gossip magazine Heat. "I don't want anything to come in the way of his career."

Police pulled their lead detective off the case on Thursday after it was revealed he himself faces attempted murder charges for shooting at a minibus. He has been replaced by South Africa's top detective.

The arrest of Pistorius last week shocked those who had watched in awe last year as he reached the semi-final of the 400 meters race in the London Olympics.

The impact has been greatest in South Africa, where Pistorius was seen as a rare hero who commanded respect from both black and white people, transcending the racial divides that persist 19 years after the end of apartheid.

(Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Divided Egypt opposition attacks Mursi on election call

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's opposition attacked President Mohammed Mursi on Friday for calling elections during a national crisis, but face a test of unity in challenging Islamists who have won every poll since the 2011 revolution.

No sooner had Mursi called the parliamentary polls on Thursday than liberals and leftists accused him of deepening divisions between Islamists and their opponents. Some threatened to boycott voting which starts on April 27th and finishes in late June.

Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood which backs Mursi, dominated the old lower house, which was dissolved last year by court order. The new parliament will face tough decisions as Egypt is seeking an IMF loan deal which would ease its financial crisis but demand unpopular austerity.

Mursi called the elections, to be held in four stages around the country, hoping they can conclude Egypt's turbulent transition to democracy which began with the overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak by popular protests.

Islamists hailed elections as the only way out of Egypt's political and economic crisis. However, liberal politician Mohamed ElBaradei said holding polls without reaching a national consensus would further "inflame the situation".

"The insistence on polarisation, exclusion and oppression along with ... the deteriorating economic and security situation will lead us to the abyss," ElBaradei, a former United Nations agency chief, said on his Twitter feed.

Egypt is split between the Islamists, who want national life to observe religion more closely, and opposition groups which hold a wide variety of visions for the future.

Across Egypt there were scattered protests in Alexandria and Port Said, while a demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir Square was muted as a sandstorm enveloped the capital.

Like the fractious opposition, the demonstrators had widely varying demands. Some called on Mursi to step down while others pressed for the military, which long backed Mubarak and his predecessors, to step back in to run Egypt.

BOYCOTT DECISION

The National Salvation Front (NSF), which groups a number of parties opposed to the Islamists, said it would hammer out its stand on the elections.

"We will meet early next week to decide on whether we will boycott or go ahead with elections. But as you can see, the opposition overall is upset over this unilateral decision on part of the presidency. This was a rushed decision," Khaled Dawood, spokesman of the NSF, said.

Dawood said Egypt should have other priorities such as changing the controversial new constitution produced last year by an assembly dominated by Islamists. "Solve these issues first then talk about elections," added Dawood.

While the opposition can agree on attacking Mursi, previous boycott threats have fizzled out. It remains fractured and disorganized, unlike the well-financed and efficient Islamist election machines which have triumphed in votes for the presidency and parliament.

"We face a difficult political decision and time is running out. The opposition faces a test of its ability to remain united," said Amr Hamzawy, a professor of politics at Cairo University and former liberal lawmaker.

ISLAMISTS READY FOR VOTE

Islamist parties and groups welcomed the new elections and dismissed the boycott threat.

"Elections are the only way out of the crisis. The people must be able to choose those they see fit. The majority of political forces will not boycott the elections," said Tarek al-Zumor of the Building and Development Party.

Essam Erian, member of the Muslim Brotherhood's ruling Freedom and Justice Party, said parliament would unite Egypt's political life.

"The coming parliament will hold a variety of national voices: Islamist, conservative, liberal and leftist. Everyone realizes the importance of the coming period and withholding one's vote is a big mistake," Erian said on his Facebook page.

Islamists are likely to form coalitions and dominate the new parliament as they did the previous short-lived lower house, which was dissolved after the Constitutional Court struck down the law used to elect it.

Voting is held in stages due to a shortage of election monitors and Mursi's choice of dates upset some in the Christian minority, which makes up about 10 percent of the population.

AlKalema, a Christian Coptic group, criticized the presidency for setting the first round to fall on the community's Easter religious holiday. "This is total negligence of the Coptic community but an intentional move to exclude them from political life," AlKalema said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and AbdelRahman Youssef in Alexandria. Writing by Marwa Awad; Editing by Jason Webb)

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Russia accuses U.S. of double standards over Syria

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States on Friday of having double standards on Syria, saying it had blocked a U.N. Security Council statement condemning a car bomb attack in Damascus.

Washington denied it had blocked the statement and said it had only asked for balance. The disagreement was likely to sour the atmosphere before Lavrov meets newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry next week in Berlin.

Lavrov told a news conference Washington had disappointed Moscow by blocking a statement condemning "terrorist attacks" near the Russian embassy in Damascus that killed more than 50 people and that Washington was threatening international unity in the "war on terror".

"We believe these are double standards," Lavrov said after talks with China's foreign minister.

"And we see in it a very dangerous tendency by our American colleagues to depart from the fundamental principle of unconditional condemnation of any terrorist act, a principle which secures the unity of the international community in the fight against terrorism," he said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. mission at the United Nations said it had not blocked any statement of condemnation but had sought to balance the text with criticism of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, which it said Russia had rejected.

"We strongly condemn all indiscriminate terrorist attacks against civilians or against diplomatic facilities," said Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. mission.

Ties between Washington and Moscow have worsened since Vladimir Putin returned to Russia's presidency last May.

The passage of U.S. legislation intended to punish Russian officials accused of human rights abuses and a Russian ban on American families adopting Russian children have also contributed to the deterioration in recent weeks.

CHINESE AND RUSSIAN UNITY

Lavrov made his comments at a joint news conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi after talks that underlined the closeness of their views on policy in Syria and North Korea.

China and Russia, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have blocked attempts by the West to mount pressure on Assad to end the violence in the nearly two-year-old conflict that has killed some 70,000 people.

The two ministers condemned North Korea's nuclear test last week but said that any response should go through the U.N. Security Council.

China and Russia had agreed that it was "vitally important not to ... allow the situation to be used as a pretext for military intervention," Lavrov said.

North Korea's latest test, its third since 2006, prompted warnings from Washington and others that more sanctions would be imposed on the isolated state. The U.N. Security Council has only just tightened sanctions on Pyongyang after it launched a long-range rocket in December.

The North is banned under U.N. sanctions from developing missile or nuclear technology.

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, said the alignment of Russian and Chinese positions was meant to give them more leverage when negotiating with the West.

"Chinese and Russian positions so far on a global level are almost identical. This is an important factor, because if Russia were alone it would be much less powerful. This is a factor Western powers cannot ignore, that Russia and China act together," said Lukyanov.

He added: "China is ready to support Russia in the Middle East on issues which are politically important for Russia, so when it comes to questions of vital importance to China, like North Korea, of course it expects reciprocity - that Russia endorse China's position."

(Writing by Thomas Grove; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Sonya Hepinstall)

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Tremonti sees instability after Italian vote

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's national election this weekend will produce a weak, unstable and probably short-lived government, former economy minister Giulio Tremonti said on Friday.

Tremonti, who is running at the head of a small party of his own, said that even if the centre left led by Pier Luigi Bersani confirmed its opinion poll lead and won a majority, it would be too small and fragile to produce an effective administration.

"Italy's economic problems are huge, and you cannot solve huge problems with a small majority," said Tremonti, who served as economy minister under former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The euro zone's third largest economy has posted six consecutive quarters of contraction, its longest recession for 20 years, and its huge public debt, the second highest in the euro zone after Greece's, is continuing to climb.

Tremonti has formed his own party to contest the election, called "Work and Freedom". It is allied with the pro-devolution Northern League for whom he is the official candidate for prime minister.

He said that the outcome many investors would favor, an alliance between the centre left and outgoing technocrat Premier Mario Monti, might get off the ground but ideological and policy differences were too great for it to last long.

"You don't just have to muster a majority after the election, you have to keep that majority and use it to make difficult decisions day after day," he said. "It's impossible that the centre left will be able to do that."

BERLUSCONI SURPRISE?

Tremonti was widely praised for keeping a tight rein on public finances during the global financial crisis from 2008 to 2011, before frictions with Berlusconi sparked the first rise in Italy's bond yields in the summer of 2011.

Those yields then spiraled out of control and led to Berlusconi's downfall at the end of that year, to usher in former European Commissioner Monti at the head of an unelected technocrat administration.

Italy should have gone to the polls after Berlusconi's fall, said Tremonti, a university professor and former tax lawyer who is in favor of much tighter regulation of financial markets.

"Bersani would have won but it would have been a democratic solution," he said. "If we had voted then, (anti-establishment candidate Beppe) Grillo would have got 4 percent, now it looks like he could get close to 20 percent."

Relations are now icy between Tremonti and Berlusconi but he cautioned that his former boss might do better in the elections than polls suggest.

"Centre-right voters are disappointed with Berlusconi, but they still see him as the only way to stop the left and I think many of those who say they won't vote for him will change their minds in the ballot box," he said.

Tremonti has been a fierce critic of Monti and took evident delight in polls suggesting his centrist bloc will come a lowly fourth behind Bersani, Berlusconi and Grillo, whose 5-Star Movement has been making rapid gains.

"Monti thought he could get 40 percent and he is going to get less than 10, markets bet on Monti and they are going to get Grillo," he said.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

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