In East Jerusalem, where 100,000 Palestinians are eligible to vote, just 6,300 residents are allowed to cast their ballot inside the city, while the remainder have to travel outside Jerusalem's boundaries.

Polls opened at 0700 (0500 GMT) and are set to close at 1900 (1700 GMT).

The BBC's Alan Johnston, at a polling station in a school in Gaza City, said voting got off to a brisk start.

About 60 people were waiting to get into the school to vote when the doors opened, while hundreds of people have been queuing at polling stations elsewhere.

In other parts of the city, members of Hamas were out in force, greeting voters as they arrived.

Hamas is accusing Fatah of corruption and incompetence, and opinion polls have put the group only a few points behind Fatah.

In Rimal neighbourhood, Hamas activists wearing green hats and bandanas held computerised lists of voters and assigned volunteers to drive supporters to the polling station.

Samer Lulu, 29, said he voted for Hamas because he was tired of corruption.

"With religious people at least we will have our public money in clean hands," AP news agency quoted him as saying.

'Historic' day

In East Jerusalem, voting is taking place at the central post office.

There, an unnamed 34-year-old woman said she voted for Fatah "because I remain faithful to Yasser Arafat," a badge of the late Palestinian leader pinned to her lapel, AFP news agency reported.

At one point, a group of right-wing Israeli MPs and their supporters tried to force their way into the post office, but were blocked by Israeli police.

Israeli security forces are reported to be keeping a low profile.

On the eve of the vote, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said he was determined to ensure the vote was a success and "conducted in a free and honest way".

"This great day will be of historic significance, a decisive step on the road to freedom and independence," he said in a televised address.

Israel's acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert welcomed the election as an historic opportunity for the Palestinians, but urged voters not to plump for "extremists" - a reference to Hamas.

The militant group's involvement has caused serious concern in Israel, the US and Europe, where Hamas is banned as a terrorist organisation.

Hamas 'pragmatic'

The BBC's James Reynolds, in Jerusalem, says there is real excitement among Palestinians who have waited a long time to pick their parliament.

Many Palestinians say they want to punish Fatah, which is widely seen as ineffective and corrupt, our correspondent says.

Hamas has taken note of what it sees as an opportunity, he says, and has cast aside its hatred of the Palestinian parliament in the hope of converting popular support into a formal political voice.

This may show Hamas has added a measure of pragmatism to its arsenal, our correspondent says, but it has not given up its weapons.

The election, which has been repeatedly delayed, is the first since 1996.

"In the frameworks of a peace agreement, a government under my leadership would agree to make real territorial concessions but will not compromise our security borders," Netanyahu said. "We want there to be less friction. We want to remove outposts to help the Palestinian population. We will not reoccupy the Palestinian population."

Netanyahu outlined five points that will be the guidelines in the Likud's platform on diplomatic and security issues: "Yes to compromises within a peace agreement, yes to security borders, no to a unilateral withdrawal, yes to moving the security fence and yes to decreasing the friction with the Palestinians."

The Likud's "security borders" include the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights, Judean desert, an undivided Jerusalem, settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria, and the hilltops overlooking Ben-Gurion Airport, the Gush Dan region and Road 443.

Netanyahu said that he would be willing to negotiate a permanent-status accord with a responsible Palestinian leadership while sticking to those borders on the basis of reciprocity. Any agreement reached with the Palestinians would then be brought to a vote among the Israeli people in a national referendum.

As reported exclusively in Sunday's Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu said that he would favor shifting the security fence to ensure that Ben-Gurion Airport, Road 443 and Road Six would not be in the range of missiles. Netanyahu said that a buffer zone would also be needed near the Dead Sea to respond to the security threat from the east.

Netanyahu's associates said that shifting the fence would require legal action. They said that the fence has been moved from the route recommended by security officials because the Supreme Court relied on international law in lieu of Israeli laws. Netanyahu wants the law changed to give the Supreme Court the means to accept the original route.

Lashing out at the two parties that a Likud spokesman on Sunday called "Siamese twins," Netanyahu said that both Labor and Kadima see the 1967 borders as their endgame with only minor adjustments. He said that by contrast, the Likud believes that withdrawing to the 1967 borders would perpetuate the conflict.

"The government's policies have strengthened Hamas and weakened the Palestinian Authority," Netanyahu said. "Reciprocity rewards those who behave positively and punishes those who violate agreements."

The foreign minstry said it had handed the US ambassador in the Central Asian state a note specifying the new conditions.

They call for "a significant increase in the lease fees, payment for ecological damage, as well as a few other points reflecting Kyrgyzstan's national internests," the ministry said in a statement.

The statement gave no further details. But parliament speaker Omurbek Tekebayev said earlier this month that Kyrgyzstan is seeking to sharply increase, to 50 million dollars (41.4 million euros) a year, the amount the United States pays for the Manas airbase,

Under the current complicated system, the land on which the airbase is located is controled by several entities, which charge anything between three cents and four dollars per square meter.

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said last month that Washington should pay "tens of times more" for use of the airbase.

Bakiyev earlier raised environmental concerns as a reason to "review" the rent paid by Washington for use of the base.

Last year US forces were evicted from a base in another ex-Soviet republic in Central Asia, Uzbekistan, which was set up to support operations in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

The eviction has forced the Americans to rely more heavily on the base in Kyrgyzstan.

Kuwait's parliament has taken the unprecedented step of unanimously voting to oust the ailing emir and replace him with the Prime Minister, ending the country's succession crisis.

Legislators and cabinet ministers agreed to depose their leader just minutes before a letter of abdication from the increasingly frail emir arrived in parliament.

Sheik Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah, who had been ruler for little more than a week, will be replaced by the Prime Minister, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah. The day-to-day running of the country will be handed over to the cabinet.

"After listening to the medical report, the assembly with its 65 members agreed to remove him from the post of emir," the parliamentary speaker, Jassem al-Kharafi, said. "The emir remains in the hearts of all Kuwaiti people. We all love, appreciate and respect him, but this is God's will. We can only wish him a quick recovery."

The parliament will now elect a new leader, widely expected to be Sheikh Sabah, by a simple majority, bypassing centuries of tradition that alternated the Kuwaiti succession between two branches of the Sabah dynasty.

The move, a rare assertion of parliamentary power in an area of the world where hereditary monarchies are near absolute, ends speculation over whether the new emir was fit enough to rule. "Today, Kuwait has rid itself of tribal and social constraints," an analyst, Mohammed al-Jassem, told Reuters. "The constitution alone now governs the politics of Kuwait."

Sheikh Saad was proclaimed king on 15 January, just hours after the death of Sheikh Jaber, who had ruled Kuwait since 1977. But rumours over Sheikh Saad's health led to a divide within the royal family as to whether he was physically capable of ruling one of the world's richest countries.

Little information on the health of the Kuwaiti royal family is ever released. It has been common knowledge for years, however, that Sheikh Saad, 75, suffers from increasingly bad health. In 1997 he was treated for a bleeding colon and last year he spent a week in hospital for high blood pressure. Some have suggested the newly-ousted ruler suffers from Alzheimer's and would have been unable even to utter the short 30-word oath in parliament that would have made his rule official. Since his succession, Sheikh Saad had appeared only in a wheelchair and had not spoken in public.

Health problems have dogged the Sabah dynasty for several years, and finding a suitable successor to Sheikh Jaber was always going to prove problematic. Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah had, in effect, been running the country since Sheikh Jaber suffered a brain haemorrhage in 2001. But even the Prime Minister, who is also in his mid-seventies, is known to have health complications.

Parliament's decision comes after a particularly difficult week for Kuwaitis who look upon their royal family with great affection. The succession crisis has also affected business in the Gulf state, which contains roughly 10 per cent of the world's crude oil reserves. Parliament has been unable to debate an $8.5bn (£4.7bn) plan to boost oil output with the help of foreign firms since the crisis began.

Last Friday, Al-Qabas, a leading Kuwaiti daily newspaper, took the remarkable step of calling for Sheikh Saad's abdication, urging him to hand the throne to "he who is able among the sons of the honourable ruling family". The decision by Al-Qabas to publicise its views on the royal family was widely seen as evidence of not only how important the succession crisis was to Kuwaitis but also their heightened concerns over business in the oil-rich state.

'Public interest'

At the Court of Appeal, judges agreed that the £150,000 damages awarded to Mr Galloway by High Court judge Mr Justice Eady in December 2004 should not be reduced.

"Given the seriousness of the key allegation - Mr Galloway had taken money from Iraq for personal profit - we can see no basis upon which this court should interfere with the amount of damages."

James Price QC, for the newspaper, told the Court of Appeal that the story was in the public interest, whether or not the documents - found at the Iraqi foreign ministry following the fall of Baghdad - were true.

He said the story, published in April 2003, had been covered by the legal defence of privilege because it was "of truly global significance".

The newspaper had apparently found evidence that a British MP, the leader of a worldwide campaign against sanctions in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and high-profile member of the anti-war lobby, had been accepting substantial amounts of money from the "oil for food" programme, Mr Price added.

He said the newspaper had never sought to prove Mr Galloway had taken money from the programme, designed to help sick and hungry Iraqis while the West imposed trade sanctions.

'Witch-hunt'

Mr Price said Mr Justice Eady had rejected the defence of privilege at the trial because the newspaper had also published its own conclusions.

He went on: "If it was entitled to publish documents under the protection of privilege, it was entitled to comment on them."

Privilege should not be lost because the newspaper took a different view of the correct interpretation of the documents to that of the trial judge, he said.

Outside the court, John Rees from the Respect party, said he was delighted with the verdict, claiming there had been "a sustained witch-hunt" against Mr Galloway.

Video footage

Meanwhile, Sir Philip Mawer, the parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, is taking legal advice about whether to reopen his investigation into complaints about Mr Galloway's conduct.

Tory MP Andrew Robathan and a member of the public complained in April 2003 that Mr Galloway had allegedly earned £375,000 from the Iraqi regime but failed to declare the money in the Register of Members' Interests.

The commissioner's report and recommendations will go to the Standards and Privileges Committee before it is published.

Meanwhile, footage has emerged of Mr Galloway with Saddam Hussein's son, Uday. Uday and his brother Qusay were killed when US forces raided a house in Mosul on 22 July 2003.

Mr Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party for comments about the Iraq war, and went on to win the parliamentary seat of Bethnal Green at the 2005 general election as leader of the anti-war Respect party, ousting Labour's Oona King.

A journalist who helped expose a series of police errors in the shooting of a Brazilian man mistaken for a suicide bomber has been arrested on suspicion of theft, a newspaper said.

The scoop in August by television broadcaster ITV News was based on leaked statements from the official inquiry into the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes at a London subway station on June 22.

The documents from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) revealed among other factors that the 27-year-old electrician had been held down when he was shot by armed officers.

The journalist, who works as a news producer for ITV News, is thought to have obtained copies of the text, The Guardian newspaper reported.

Leicestershire Police arrested him in October and raided his home, the daily said, quoting an ITV News insider.

The anonymous insider said police seemed to be looking for evidence that money was paid for the information. This did not appear to be the case.

A 43-year-old IPCC employee has also been arrested and since resigned from the commission, according to the newspaper. Police have also arrested a 30-year-old woman over the affair. All three people remain on police bail.

The de Menezes expose by ITV News is regarded as one of the biggest scoops in the history of British television news.

David Mannion, the broadcaster's editor in chief, told The Guardian: "We absolutely stand by the story, the way we covered it and the way we got the story; it was to our usual high editorial standards."

De Menezes was shot seven times on a subway train at Stockwell Underground station in south London the day after an alleged attempt to replicate the July 7 attacks on the capital's transport system.

By creating a unique address for China, Google hopes to make its search engine more widely available and easier to use in the world's most populous country.

Because of government barriers set up to suppress information, Google's China users previously have been blocked from using the search engine or encountered lengthy delays in response time.

The service troubles have frustrated many Chinese users, hobbling Google's efforts to expand its market share in a country that expected to emerge as an Internet gold mine over the next decade.

China already has more than 100 million Web surfers and the audience is expected to swell substantially _ an alluring prospect for Google as it tries to boost its already rapidly rising profits.

Baidu.com Inc., a Beijing-based company in which Google owns a 2.6 percent stake, currently runs China's most popular search engine. But a recent Keynote Systems survey of China's Internet preferences concluded that Baidu remains vulnerable to challenges from Google and Yahoo Inc.

To obtain the Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country's government finds objectionable. Google will base its censorship decisons on guidance provided by Chinese government officials.

Although China has loosened some of its controls in recent years, some topics, such as Taiwan's independence and 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre, remain forbidden subjects.

Google officials characterized the censorship concessions in China as an excruciating decision for a company that adopted "don't be evil" as a motto. But management believes it's a worthwhile sacrifice.

"We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel.

Google's decision rankled Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group that has sharply criticized Internet companies including Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com for submitting to China's censorship regime.

"This is a real shame," said Julien Pain, head of Reporters Without Borders' Internet desk. "When a search engine collaborates with the government like this, it makes it much easier for the Chinese government to control what is being said on the Internet."

When Google censors results in China, it intends to post notifications alerting users that some content has been removed _ to comply with local laws. The company provides similar alerts in Germany and France when, to comply with national laws, it censors results to remove references to Nazi paraphernalia.

Google is cooperating with China's government at the same time it is battling the U.S. government over a subpoena seeking a breakdown of one week's worth of search requests _ a list that would cover millions of terms.

Reflecting its uneasy alliance with the Chinese government, Google isn't releasing all its services.

Neither Google's e-mail nor blogging services will be offered in China because the company doesn't want to risk being ordered by the government to turn over anyone's personal information. The e-mail service, called Gmail, creates a huge database of users' messages and makes them instantly searchable. The blogging services contain a wide range of personal background.

Yahoo came under fire last year after it provided the government with the e-mail account information of a Chinese journalist who was later convicted for violating state secrecy laws.

Initially, Google's Chinese service will be limited to searching Web pages and images. The company also will provide local search results and a special edition of its news service that will be confined to government-sanctioned media.

Asked after his meeting with Bush whether they discussed the attack, for which Washington refuses to take responsibility, Aziz told reporters: "We discussed every issue which related to relations between the two countries."

"We discussed the war on terror and the need for closer communication and coordination to take this effort forward," the prime minister said after a nearly two-hour long meeting with Bush.

During a brief joint public appearance in the Oval Office, the president praised Pakistan as a strong ally in the global war on terrorism and announced that he would visit Pakistan and India in March.

"I'm really looking forward to going to your country," said Bush, who had been expected to visit the region early this year. "I want to thank you for your invitation and your hospitality in advance."

Bush and Aziz papered over tensions resulting from the airstrike, and emphasized cooperation on issues like the global war on terrorism, fighting the spread of nuclear weapons technology, and trade.

They also highlighted US efforts to help Pakistan recover from the devastating October 2005 earthquake, the worst in the country's history, which killed nearly 74,000 people and left more than three million homeless.

"I was very pleased that the United States, our taxpayers, our military, could contribute to helping the people of Pakistan recover. They are our friends," said Bush.

"A sense of caring and sharing always builds a better relationship between countries. And that's what we are seeing between Pakistan and the United States," said the prime minister.

"We also strive for peace in our area. It's an area which has a lot of challenges, and we are pursuing peace with all our neighbors. We want a solution of all disputes, including the Kashmir dispute," said Aziz.

Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan each hold the Himalayan region of Kashmir in part but claim it in full. The dispute has kept ties between the neighbors tense for almost six decades and triggered two of their three wars since 1947.

The prime minister also said Pakistan wanted "a strong, stable Afghanistan" and that Islamabad was "against proliferation of nuclear weapons by anybody. And we want to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations."

"I think the relationship with Pakistan is a vital relationship for the United States," said Bush. "We're working closely to defeat the terrorists who would like to harm America and harm Pakistan."

The meeting came after Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden threatened fresh attacks on the United States in a new audiotape, and following the suspected US Central Intelligence Agency airstrike on January 13.

The strike on the remote village of Damadola, in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan, was reportedly aimed at killing Al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, during a gathering of senior Al-Qaeda operatives there.

Bush spokesman Scott McClellan suggested that the United States reserved the right to future military strikes, telling reporters: "This president has made it clear we're going to pursue terrorists wherever they are."

But Bush and Aziz "talked about how we're working together in the war on terrorism and how it's important to continue working together. They talked about continuing to work to improve cooperation and coordination," he said.

It's what made them come from all over the world to this bitterly cold and snow-bound valley high in the Swiss Alps.

The badge is their passport to the World Economic Forum, and they are determined to make good use of it.

Networking is the name of the game, or schmoozing, as some would call it - except that the best schmoozer of them all, Bill Clinton, is not in Davos this year (for once).

You're here, you must be interesting

Business cards change hand at a rapid clip; old friends embrace; people move around with their eyes set chest-high where those white badges dangle, displaying name and affiliation of each participant.

It's a diverse bunch of people, but they have one thing in common, says one of the participants: "The great thing about Davos is this assumption that you must be interesting, just because you are here."

And in most cases the assumption is right.

Take Markus Brehler, the founder of Enocean.

His cutting-edge tech firm has developed ultra-low power sensors and switches that get their energy from unlikely sources like vibration and temperature. It's environmentally friendly and does away with miles of cabling.

It's his first time in Davos and he is keen to meet potential business contacts.

"But the best thing is the opportunity to take your mind away from running a company for a few days and learn new stuff," he says.

Take Matthieu Ricard, a molecular geneticist by training, now co-director of the Buddhist Shechen monastery in Nepal.

Dressed in purple and orange robes, he is here to discuss what makes people happy.

"We work so hard to improve ourselves, but our outer conditions contribute to just 15% of our well-being," he says. "I want to talk about what makes out the rest of our happiness."

And of course he wants to network as well, in the hope of finding help for the 16 clinics his monastery runs in Nepal and Tibet , and for his schools in the desperately poor districts high up in the Himalayas.

Njabulo Ndebele is the vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, and looking forward to a meeting with university presidents from around the world.

Wang Jianmao is a professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai and eager "to promote China, to make sure that it is treated as an equal member of the international community".

A man with a mission

The Davos agenda is packed. Too packed for many.

Amory Lovins runs the Rocky Mountain Institute, an environmental research lab.

He pulls out two large pieces of paper, tightly printed in small font to list the talks he has to give, sessions he hopes to attend, and the numerous events he would really love to go to but is unlikely to be able to squeeze in.

He dives into his backpack, pulls out a bowl and bangs it hard with a metal stick without making a dent.

"I'll give a speech to a meeting of the chief executives of all the world's top car makers this week," he says. "I'll show them this new light-weight carbon fibre thermo plastic composite material", which is lighter than steel or aluminium, just as tough and will do wonders for fuel efficiency.

Davos is full of people like that, and the best place to make connections and your case.

"You would never be able to meet that many interesting people in one place in normal life," says Mack Gill.

The 36-year old runs the rapidly growing offshore operation of financial software giant Sungard in India.

It's his first time in Davos, and he confesses to being "really excited" about the five days that lie ahead.

Talking trade

But it's not all talk.

Once again the forum has attracted many of the world's most influential trade ministers.

Nearly 30 of them are in town, and as in previous years they are meeting on the sidelines of the event to hammer out a framework that could restart the global trade round.

The fact that they do so surrounded by top executives of the world's largest multinational companies will fan the suspicion of critics of the world's trade regime.

Anti-poverty group Actionaid has just released a report to coincide with the WEF start, accusing corporate lobbyists of having "an undue influence on the current global trade talks".

And in a way Davos is indeed the perfect place to lobby, whether for a good cause or your country.

India is making Davos the focus of its new "India everywhere" campaign, with a huge delegation of top government officials and business leaders.

Others are betting on the powers of jazz.

The state of Louisiana has invited to a "Bring back New Orleans" party, hoping to persuade investors to return to the hurricane-battered region.

Many of the people that Louisiana needs to persuade will be among the white badge holders in Davos.

European leaders were already jittery after supplies were disrupted twice this month, once during a Russian dispute with Ukraine ostensibly over prices and later when extremely low temperatures caused surging demand in Russia.

Georgian officials, upset over what they contended were unexplained delays in repairing the sabotaged pipeline, cautioned that Europe should take a look at Georgia's unheated capital this week before become more reliant on Russia.

"The lesson that all of Europe should draw is the importance of alternative corridors of energy and of not being dependent on one source of energy, especially from a country such as Russia," George Arveladze, presidential chief of staff in Georgia, said in an interview Tuesday.

All this is proving an embarrassment for Moscow, since the problems coincided with the Kremlin's assuming the rotating presidency of the Group of 8 industrial countries and pushing a theme of energy security.

Officials of Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, have repeatedly insisted that supplies are reliable at current levels and can easily be increased from vast Arctic reserves to meet growing demand in Europe, where the company expects to increase its market share to 38 percent by 2020.

Chechen separatists and terrorists have articulated a policy of targeting objects important to Russia's economy, and the country's energy infrastructure has been sabotaged before, although without causing major disruptions.

Last summer, the Federal Security Service said it had arrested 11 suspects in what it called a terrorist attack on a gas pipelines in the Russian republic of Tatarstan, a Muslim enclave east of Moscow.

A spokesman linked that attack to separatist movements in the north Caucasus, the southern region near Chechnya where the bombing took place Sunday.

Earlier, saboteurs struck gas pipelines in Dagestan, another Russian republic in the Caucasus Mountains. Two years ago, a bombing and explosion shut for several days the same mountain gas route to Georgia that was hit Sunday.

The strike before dawn on a main and reserve pipeline, running on opposite banks of the headwaters of the Terek River, at an elevation of about 1,000 meters, or 3,300 feet, set fire to residual gas in a reserve pipeline and punctured but did not ignite the compressed fuel in the active pipeline, said Vladimir Ivanov, a spokesman for a regional branch of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. He spoke in a telephone interview.

He said that whoever placed the bombs probably waded under cover of darkness across the shallow river from a nearby military highway.

Alerted by falling pressures, pipeline workers shut valves situated about three kilometers, or nearly two miles, from the blast site, Ivanov explained.

Repairs were delayed Tuesday by what Gazprom said was residual gas in a pipeline that prevented welding for fear of another explosion.

The work was also slowed by strong winds and subzero temperatures, Gazprom said, referring to the Celsius scale.

Meanwhile, an alternative supply route to Georgia was disrupted by the failure of a compressor station, officials reported.

Georgian officials, who have hinted that Russia was behind the bombing to undermine the economy of a pro-Western former Soviet state, dismissed Gazprom's explanation of the delay.

"Officials continue to request explanations from Gazprom and other offi- cials within the Russian government following the sudden and simultaneous interruptions, but have so far been met with silence," the government said Tuesday.

Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas producer, maintains about 100,000 kilometers of pipelines.

Many are above ground and easily accessible. The system is a web of interconnected pipes to ensure reliability, meaning that any single pipeline failure would probably not carry grave consequences, according to officials.

Still, security services have said they are on the alert.

"We have our methods of securing the gas pipeline, including the export routes," Sergei Ignatchenko, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, a successor to the KGB, said in a telephone interview.

"Of course, I can't tell you the specific methods we use," he added.

Italian energy officials said that natural gas deliveries were off 8 percent because of Russian supply problems unrelated to the bombing. The cabinet of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi met to consider emergency measures.

Officials recommended that Italians shower rather than take baths and cover their pots and pans as they cook to conserve energy, the Bloomberg news agency reported.

"European energy policy must ... take account of two essential elements at an international level: the increasingly tense situation worldwide between oil and natural gas supply and demand (and) climate change," he said.

"The three goals of any responsible energy policy ... are security of supply, consideration for environmental impacts, both local and global, and competitiveness," Breton told his EU counterparts in Brussels.

In an 18-page document setting out the French plans, Breton cited International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that global energy consumption is due to surge by 60 percent by 2030.

Fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — will still provide 85 percent of the world's energy, according to IEA figures.

Europe's dependence on gas has come under the spotlight in recent weeks, initially following a standoff between Russia and Ukraine which saw supplies temporarily reduced to some EU countries.

That case was followed a few days later by a cut in gas to Moldova — like Ukraine an ex-Soviet satellite on the expanded EU's border — and then to Georgia after mystery explosions on two key pipelines at the weekend.

While not referring explicitly to the latest incidents, the French minister said the EU must ensure it is not overly dependent on any one source.

"Guaranteeing the EU's security of supply with a view to sustainable development ... implies diversifying the energy sources and taking advantage of a broader supply spectrum," Breton said.

France is a leading producer of nuclear energy, which currently provides some 34 percent of Europe's elecricity, Breton noted. Nearly all electricity in France is produced by nuclear power and France exports electricity. Other key EU states such as Germany have long opposed atomic power.

While agreeing that each country must decide its own energy policy, he noted that the current level of nuclear power, if produced by fossil fuels, would produce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the entire European car fleet.

"Maintaining the current contribution of nuclear power to the European energy mix and preserving Europe's technological and industrial edge in this field are issues of strategic importance for the Union," he said.

Breton also noted that the IEA had concluded that, in its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, "we are on the wrong track."

"Climate change ... could have serious impacts in the near future, through changes to the water cycle and to basic economic activities such as agriculture and energy production," he said.

And he added: "France believes that the challenges to be met are so great that with respect to world energy supply and demand, no technology and no instrument of public policy should be necessarily ruled out."

The two countries are close security partners, but are currently engaged in a tug-of-war over the custody of four U.S. Marines charged by a Philippine court for raping a local woman.

Last week a Philippine legislative panel reviewing the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) agreed to scrap the treaty and seek a new one in a bid to grant Manila more authority to punish U.S. troops who may commit crimes in the country.

"An (U.S.) embassy official told me the Philippines does not only stand to lose a lot, but all if we abrogate the treaty," a senior Filipino diplomat, who declined to be named, told reporters.

"They are not happy with what's happening."

The terms of the VFA surfaced after the four U.S. Marines faced trial by a Philippine court for the rape in November last year of a 22-year-old Filipino woman inside a van at the former U.S. navy base in Subic Bay, northwest of Manila.

Washington has rejected a request by Manila to hand over the marines, saying the treaty allowed for U.S. custody until the case was concluded.

Despite weeks of small protest rallies, the rape case has not inflamed any serious anti-American sentiment among the public.

On Wednesday, Alberto Romulo, the foreign affairs secretary, told a senate budget hearing that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has agreed to abolish a government agency tasked to monitor the implementation of the security pact.

But some Filipino diplomats said Arroyo could replace it with a new body that would be clothed with wider powers to protect the country's interests.

The United States, Manila's former colonial master, has been a major source of military assistance for the poorly funded Philippine armed forces in the form of training and hardware such as helicopters, gunboats and rifles.

Since 2000 when U.S. troops returned to the Philippines to exercise and train with local military units, Washington has poured more than $300 million in security assistance to Manila, excluding funds to build roads and schools in poor communities.