Senior Indonesian seismologist Fauzi told Jakarta-based Radio Elshinta the earthquake appeared too small to trigger a tsunami.

"It has been going on pretty much non-stop since June 10," said Mueller-Westermeier. "It's far too warm and too dry in a lot of parts of Germany."

Shipping on the river Elbe -- which also runs through the Czech Republic and Poland -- was stopped as water levels dropped nearly 1 meter (yard) to around 95 centimeters in Germany.

"No cargo shipping is possible," said Herbert Dorf, a senior official at the Water and Shipping Bureau in Magdeburg.

There is a similar situation with the Oder river, which forms a stretch of the border between Germany and Poland.

Some nuclear power plants operating with river water cooling systems had to cut electricity output by up to 40 percent said Ivo Banek, spokesman for energy firm Vattenfall.

In order to protect their fragile ecosystems, rivers in Germany have limits on how warm water returning from power stations can be. Hotter rivers also mean soaring electricity prices, Banek said.

"There is no danger of a physical lack of electricity in Germany, but prices on the wholesale market have rocketed by 500 percent over the past weeks," he said.

In neighboring Poland, fire and forest services said they had put 90 percent of the country on the top level of fire alert. Some southern districts have begun imposing limits on daily water usage, appealing to local residents to stop watering their gardens or washing cars.

"The suspicion is that some people are putting the welfare of their tomatoes first," one local mayor told the TVN news channel. "As a result in 10 days or so they may not have water to wash dishes or shower."

Experts also warned that food prices were set to rise as reports of crop failing amid the sweltering heat intensified.

A leading food industry group said Europe's shops and supermarkets are facing a shortage of vegetables later this year as a result of the current heatwave.

According to OEITFL, which represents Europe's fruit and vegetable processing industry, shop owners must prepare for the likelihood of empty shelves, fridges and freezers.

"The position is reminiscent of the catastrophic year 1976 when a comparable lack of rain was registered which now leaves them with less production than anticipated under normal weather conditions," said Susanne Meyer, OEITFL secretary general.

The heat wave has already taken its human toll. Some 40 people died over the past week in France and dozens more were killed by the scorching temperatures in the United States.

In the Netherlands, human resources firm Arbo Unie, which monitors 2.2 million workers in the country, said sick rates are 7.5 percent higher than last year due to the heat.

Washington is fuming. Having tried to block Chavez from replacing aging military equipment, it has watched as Russia welcomed Chavez with opens arms into its munitions factories.

"We repeatedly talked to the Russian government that the arms purchases planned by Venezuela exceeded its defensive needs and are not helpful in terms of regional stability," State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters on Tuesday. "We certainly hope that Russia will reconsider."

Chavez spent the last few days in Belarus, touring Stalin-era military defenses and watching military parades with fellow maverick Lukashenko, who oversees a Soviet-style command economy.

More than just needling Washington with his controversial friends, Chavez is quite serious in his desire to build a bloc of nations willing to counter U.S. influence in the world, analysts say.

He is also trying to win a two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council to balance Washington's influence. Last year, Chavez courted an alliance with Iran just as the nation was facing international criticism over its nuclear program.

"Chavez has embarked on a vision of a multipolar world," Venezuelan political scientist Jose Vicente Carrasquero said. "He wants to generate the idea that the unipolarity represented by the United States can disappear."

The Venezuelan leader signed agreements on Tuesday to share military and oil technology with Lukashenko, who Washington says runs the last dictatorship in Europe.

Before that, Chavez visited the childhood home of iconic Argentine left-wing guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara with Castro, and both men slammed U.S. "imperialism" during a meeting of the Mercosur Latin American trade bloc.

BLUSTER

But despite the grandstanding, for the moment Venezuela and the United States need each other since the South American country is the world's No. 5 oil exporter and the fourth largest supplier of oil to the U.S.

Chavez is hugely popular with the poor in Venezuela for channeling record oil dollar revenues into health, education and subsidized food schemes.

Flush with cash after several years of high oil prices, he has revived a project to unite Latin America as proposed by 19th century liberation hero Simon Bolivar, and has said the region should have a common currency and armed forces.

The Bush administration is backing a bid from Guatemala in the hope of keeping Chavez off the Security Council. But Chavez is using oil largesse on his world tour to try to drum up more support.

Beyond the rhetoric, Chavez seems to be serious about wanting to build on anti-U.S. sentiment in the world.

"I think it is part bluster, it always is with Chavez, but this is someone who could stir things up and cause a lot of mischief in the world. It would be serious mistake to ignore him," said Latin American analyst Michael Shifter from Washington think-tank Inter-American Dialogue.

The Russian-made Ilyushin 76-cargo plane was met by two senior Islamic commanders, with another member of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS) saying it had weapons from an undisclosed origin.

It was earlier thought that the plane's tail bore the Somali national flag -- a white star on a blue background -- but officials said it was the emblem of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet state that frequently charters its planes. The Kazakh flag has a gold emblem on a blue background.

The plane landed at about 8:00 am (0500 GMT) and left for an unknown destination two hours later after the cargo was offloaded, witnesses said. Journalists were chased away from the facility.

"Military supplies from Eritrea have reached Mogadishu -- they include explosives, mines, hand-propelled grenades, bazookas and anti-tank/aircraft missiles," deputy information minister Salad Ali Jeeley told reporters in Baidoa, the temporary base of the government, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) northwest of the capital.

"We call upon the international community including IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) to witness what is happening in Somalia and Eritrea's intervention," he said. "The government condemns the Eritrean intervention."

But the SICS insisted that the airport was open for civilian use.

"The Mogadishu airport and all other airports are open and those who want to use the facility have the right to do so. I am not in charge of cargo and you have no right to ask me what was the shipment. I don't want to speculate," SICS security chief Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad told reporters here.

Asked about the government claim that the cargo was weapons, he said: "Go and ask Eritrea if you want to say something about them. What I can say is that the plane has landed and taken off safely."

Earlier, a senior government official told AFP: "We know the plane is carrying weapons. We are very angry."

On July 13, the UN Security Council endorsed an easing of the 15-year-old UN arms embargo on Somalia to allow the possible deployment of foreign peacekeepers in a move aimed at bolstering the country's weak transitional federal government.

This drew an angry reaction from the Islamists, who are opposed to the deployment of peacekeepers.

The Islamists, who control much of southern Somalia including Mogadishu, are at loggerheads with the government over the deployment of Ethiopian troops to protect the fragile government.

The government and the largely Ethiopian Christian regime have rejected the incursion claims, arguing that the SICS was looking for an excuse to wage war and expand its territory.

On Tuesday, the SICS threatened to boycott Arab League-mediated peace talks in Khartoum with the government unless Ethiopian troops withdraw.

Washington has urged Somalia's neighbors, most of whom have been accused of violating the UN arms embargo, not to endanger the country's peace talks.

The United States, other Western countries and the
United Nations have all backed the Arab League initiative to bring the Islamists and the government to peace talks in a bid to prevent the country from plunging into deeper turmoil.

In the previous agreement signed on June 22, both sides vowed to recognize each other and refrain from provocative military or propaganda steps. But the Islamists, who routed US-backed warlords from the capital and surrounding townships, have been accused of violating the truce.

UN officials however have credited the Islamists with restoring order in Mogadishu, notably by dismantling roadblocks where civilians were being extorted.

The rise of the Islamists has caused concern in Washington, which says it fears a Taliban-style takeover of Somalia.

The Horn of African country, home to about 10 million people, has been without a functioning central authority since strongman Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. Since then, more than 14 internationally backed peace initiatives have failed to restore a government here.

Wallace said several experts spent Tuesday analyzing only that page - the number of letters on each line, lines on each page, size of page - and the book's binding and cover, which he described as "leather velum, very thick wallet in appearance."

It could take months of study, he said, just to identify the safest way to pry open the pages without damaging or destroying them. He ruled out the use of X-rays to investigate without moving the pages.

Ireland already has several other holy books from the early medieval period, including the ornately illustrated Book of Kells, which has been on display at Trinity College in Dublin since the 19th century.