"Both sides have agreed on the technical development plans. Parties also reached consensus over the reserve of Yadavaran," the official close to the negotiations told Reuters, but declined to give a timeline for signing the pact.

Sinopec Group, China's second-largest state-run oil and gas firm, and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) would each take 50% of the project with an estimated reserve of 3bn barrels, said the official.

NIOC last week was quoted by the oil ministry's website SHANA as saying that all the elements of the contract had been finalised and ready for signing.

The Beijing-based Chinese oil executive said some final, small issues remained, but added the Chinese side was confident they will be resolved. The official declined to elaborate. If completed, this would be one of the largest overseas energy investments by Sinopec, parent of listed Sinopec Corp, after its purchase of mid-sized oilfield Udmurtneft in Russia for about $3.5bn earlier this year.
"The industry should not be surprised that a final deal is near. Companies have been in talks for nearly three years," said the official.

The official also confirmed a Reuters report on Monday that Royal Dutch Shell Plc, as a technical partner of Sinopec, has an option to take a stake in the project.
Sinopec agreed in October 2004 to take the lead in developing Yadavaran and to buy 10mn tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year from Iran for 25 years, but differences over the size of field and costs were behind a previous delay.

Chinese state oil firms, keen to boost oil and gas reserves overseas to meet surging fuel demand at home, have shown less concerns over political hurdles.
Washington has already penalised Chinese firms to working in Iran, which it accuses of seeking nuclear arms and funding anti-Israeli militia. Tehran denied these charges.

"For the past three days I have been looking for my two wives and six children who ran into the bush," Marzouk Hassane, a Birao businessman, said on Thursday. He said the air strikes began on Monday.

The chief of operations of the rebel Union des forces démocratiques pour le rassemblement (UFDR), Diego Yao, said on Thursday: "The French used six jet fighters and four helicopters to pound our position in Birao."

The French military attaché in Bangui, the capital, declined to give his name or comment on reports of French military action. France had said it would provide only logistics and military equipment to the CAR army.

Yao said the air strikes had forced his men to abandoned Birao and flee into the bush. He also said a large number of the town's residents had been killed by the air strikes. This information has not yet been confirmed by independence sources.

"The casualties are high but we need an independent organisation to assess this," Yao said.

A CAR army colonel in Bangui said only rebels had been targeted by the national and the French armies.

"The military operation in the region is aimed at chasing away the rebels and it is a pity that some civilians were caught in the fighting," said the colonel, who did not want to be named.

The rebels had seized Birao on 31 October and went on to take Ouadda-Djalle, Ouadda and Sam-Ouandja. They had threatened to take the mining town of Bria, 650 km northeast of Bangui.

After losing these towns, the government appealed to France, its ally and former colonial power, for help. The CAR government said France provided logistical support to the army in the drive to retake Birao, a town of 30,000 residents.

The army has also retaken Mouka and Oudda.

When the insurrection began, the government blamed Sudan for providing help to the rebels, a charge that the Sudanese government has denied. However, some Bangui-based diplomats said CAR's northern rebellion was linked to the fighting in Darfur, Sudan, where pro-government militias have been battling a guerrilla force in the west of that country.

"We cannot disassociate the CAR crisis from that of Chad and Darfur," a diplomat, who requested anonymity, said.

During a meeting with a Lebanese MPs in Beirut on Friday, Royal had voiced agreement with an MP from the Hezbollah militant movement, Ali Ammar, that US foreign policy smacked of "insanity".

She said she shared his views "on a lot of things, notably his analysis of the role of the United States."

Ammar also compared Israel's behaviour towards Lebanon - which Israel bombarded over July and August in its 34-day war with Hezbollah - with "Nazism".

Royal, caught off guard by the storm her comments unleashed back in France, was forced to amend her comments by saying she meant to criticise only Washington's military adventure in Iraq. She said she drew a distinction between the policies of US President George W. Bush's White House and "the wider policies of the United States."

She also said she did not hear Ammar's "Nazism" comment - "otherwise I would have left the room."

The fumble was Royal's first error as she campaigns to become France's first woman head of state in elections due in April and May next year.

She had organised her Middle East trip - which on the weekend saw her travelling on to Israel and the Palestinian territories - to counter criticism in France that she was a political lightweight with a poor grasp of foreign policy.

The ruling conservative UMP party, which is yet to formally nominate its presidential candidate, seized on her gaffe, with Douste-Blazy going on French radio and television in Paris to blast Royal's words.

"I want to remind her that we are stronger and better listened to when we remain firm on our principles - I'm thinking in particular about Israel's right to security and about relations with the United States, even if we disagree sometimes with them," he said.

He quoted from Charles de Gaulle, saying: "I went to the Orient complicated with simple ideas. And hoping that these ideas were not simplistic."

The head of the Socialist Party, François Hollande, who is also Royal's partner and father of her four children, attempted to hose down the uproar.

The focus on her exchange with Ammar was "misplaced", he told Jewish Community Radio. He claimed that the translation of the meeting was "abridged, cut down, and did not contain all the comments reported elsewhere."

Hollande said "Hezbollah made comments that were, as usual, provocative, insulting. She reacted to them as she should have reacted to them" on the basis of the translation.

It was uncertain what damage the incident would inflict on Royal's campaign.

The latest poll, published on Sunday and conducted before Royal started her Middle East trip, showed she and her likely rival on the right, Nicolas Sarkozy, were in a dead heat for the presidency in terms of voter intentions.

The two declared candidates to replace Jacques Chirac each have 50 percent support, the poll by the IFOP institute showed.

Royal shed one point from the last IFOP poll released two weeks ago, while Sarkozy, who Thursday declared he was calling for his ruling conservative UMP party's nomination, picked up a point.

"We are positioning ourselves as an international channel equipped with a French eye," Grégoire Deniau, France 24's editorial director said.

"We have an approach which is more distanced and closer to the south than the other international news channels," he said.

As Qatar-based Al-Jazeera launched its English-language TV news channel mid-November, France 24's journalists were already gearing up for their debut at the network's new Paris hub.


France 24 gears up for 'global battle'
France 24: Perspective or propaganda?
Although the France 24 website will be trilingual in French, English and Arabic from the outset, television programmes in Arabic will only begin in mid-2007, and Spanish is set to follow in 2009.

"As to Al-Jazeera, it represents a very specific viewpoint, it defends, even in its Anglophone version, the eye of the Middle East on the rest of the world," Deniau added.

France is famous for defending the French language against a creeping dominance of English - President Jacques Chirac stormed out of an European Union summit earlier this year when a fellow Frenchman spoke in English.

But the new French 24/7 TV network says it is broadcasting in several languages in order to reach large population groups, although it stresses it carries a single message.

Alain de Pouzilhac, the channel's chief executive officer, has said that France 24 would challenge 'Anglo-Saxon' views presented by BBC World and CNN International by relying on "French values".

He said in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper at the end of October that the channel would highlight "diversity (and)... confrontation, without forgetting the culture and French art of living."

First mooted several years ago, the project gained momentum with the US-led invasion of Iraq because Chirac was reportedly miffed by the way CNN and the BBC presented France's opposition to the war.

Chirac has said he hoped the channel would place France "at the forefront of the global battle of images".

With a mix of news, economic news, culture, sports and weather, with features and debate, the channel is targeting opinion leaders, and will initially be broadcast in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the US cities of New York and Washington DC.

State-funded, France 24 is a private, joint venture between France's leading commercial and national public television networks, TF1 and France Televisions, and will be funded to the tune of 86 million euros (110 million dollars) by the government for 2007.

France 24 will produce some of its own pictures but also rely on its managing companies and partners, including Agence France-Presse and Radio France Internationale.

For several weeks, the network's 380-strong staff, including 170 journalists, have been doing dry-runs at its three-storey headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux, on Paris' southern outskirts.

Some 80 million households in more than 90 countries will be able to receive the network, it has said.

Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase was in hiding last night as military head Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama deployed troops across the city.

Dozens of troops set up roadblocks in and around Suva, completely blocking some roads but allowing traffic to pass along others, a Reuters witness said.

Mr Qarase narrowly avoided being captured by the military late in the afternoon when he used a helicopter to get around a military roadblock on the King's Highway out of Suva.

The army kept up the pressure on Qarase when he was later summoned to President Ratu Josefa Iloilo's residence.

Qarase drove to the sprawling harbourside estate but was told by soldiers at a roadblock outside that he would have to walk the rest of the way, a witness inside the grounds said.

Qarase, whose bodyguards were also disarmed by the military, refused and returned to his office.

It was not formally pronounced as a coup - Fiji's fourth since 1987 - but acting police commissioner Moses Driver admitted he was powerless if the military wanted to do anything in the city.

"We won't be able to do anything at all, I'm sorry."

The police, he said, "were not geared up" to deal with the military.

The weapons seized from the police tactical response unit are believed to include sub-machine guns, shotguns and Glock pistols.

Commodore Bainimarama called a brief press conference last night to announce that his soldiers had stripped the weapons from the police tactical response unit.

"This was done to ensure that the (unit) won't be used by dissidents as an instrument against the RFMF and the people of Fiji."

Commodore Bainimarama said soldiers would disarm bodyguards protecting Mr Qarase and other government ministers.

But as he spoke a soldier passed him a piece of paper, which he read and then announced: "I understand the weapons belonging to bodyguards for the ministers and prime minister have been returned."

Asked who was now running the country, Commodore Bainimarama said he would not comment.

Mr Driver had said earlier that the military raid on the police weapons stash was unlawful and the culprits could expect to face charges.

Armed soldiers who had set up roadblocks around Suva had also acted illegally, Mr Moses told a press conference.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told his parliament yesterday: "It is clear Fiji is on the brink of a coup."

The military was trying to slowly take control as there was a split in its ranks over whether to stage a coup, Mr Downer said.

"My guess is that within the military there is a fair bit of resistance to these tactics and quite a lot of resistance to a coup. There isn't an inclination to mutiny against the commander, so it's a torturously complicated situation."

However there were no obvious signs of a split in the military.

Qarase told Fiji radio on Monday morning that he remained in control and has called an emergency cabinet meeting for Tuesday.

A New Zealand Foreign Affiars Ministry spokesman said that at any one time there were about 1500 New Zealand tourists and up to 3000 expatriate New Zealanders in Fiji.

The ministry has advised against all non-essential travel to Suva.

Flight Centre spokesman John McGuinness said in the past two weeks, about 30 per cent of those with travel plans to Fiji had either cancelled, deferred or changed destinations.

However, as the buildup of tension in Fiji had been gradual, those who decided to change their travel plans had already done so, he said.

"We are seeing a drop-off in those changing their plans. Those who have decided to go are sticking to their plans."

The United States, Britain and the United Nations have all warned Bainimarama not to attempt to take over the government, with concerns that another coup would devastate the fragile local economy based on tourism and sugar.

Dion scored a surprise win over political rookie Michael Ignatieff on the fourth ballot in a highly dramatic convention that ended early Saturday evening.

When asked which party they would vote for if an election were held today, the Liberals led by Dion came out on top: (percentage-point change from an Oct. 12-15 poll in brackets):

Liberals: 37 per cent (+5)
Conservatives: 31 per cent (-1)
NDP: 14 per cent (-3)
Bloc Quebecois: 11 per cent (unchanged)
Greens: 7 per cent (-2)
In Ontario, the Liberals experienced a 12-point jump, going from 36 per cent to 48 per cent. The Tories dropped a point to 32 per cent. However, in Quebec and the West, the Liberals' numbers were flat.

"The Liberal Party has had almost a week of sustained and generally favourable media coverage, so everybody really expected they would get a bump in the polls," CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife said.

Approval numbers for Harper's government remain in the black: 56 per cent approve of the job his government is doing, while 38 per cent disapprove.

However, pollster Tim Woolstencroft of The Strategic Counsel told CTV.ca those numbers are eroding when compared to figures from the summer. In mid-July, 67 per cent approved and 27 per cent disapproved.

Asked about how Harper and Dion would measure up in an election campaign, Fife said: "Stephane Dion and Stephen Harper are men of great integrity, high intelligence and are strategic thinkers.

"They also have different visions of the country. So I think we are going to see an amazing federal election campaign."

Most observers think Canada could be plunged into an election as early as this spring.

The poll also finds that choice of Dion as Liberal leader seems to have the initial stamp of approval from the Canadian public and has also given the party a bump in popularity.

"We have the Liberal grassroots thinking that Dion was a better choice and Canadians seem to agree," said Fife.

The Strategic Counsel poll found that 55 per cent of Canadians consider Dion to be a good choice for leader.

Nineteen per cent felt the Quebec MP and cabinet veteran was a poor choice, while 27 per cent had no opinion.

"Stephane Dion is a little like (former Liberal prime minister) Jean Chretien. The media and elites always underestimated Chretien, but he identified with people on Main Street," Fife said.

"I think average Canadians respect Stephane Dion because he's gutsy and he's tough, and I think (Conservative Prime Minister) Stephen Harper should be very careful."

In Dion's home province, 62 per cent found Dion a good choice while 29 per cent said he was a poor one.

Both those numbers are the highest and lowest for any regional breakout.

While 27 per cent polled either didn't know or refused to answer the Dion question, that number dropped to nine per cent in Quebec.

"They know him better there," Woolstencroft told CTV.ca.

Dion has been a polarizing figure in Quebec because he is a strong federalist.

Right now, a good interpretation is that Canadians appear willing to give Dion a chance, he said.

Woolstencroft said his performance in Parliament over the coming week could have an impact on defining his image.

Only about 34 of Canadians say they followed the campaign closely. In a separate question, Dion and Ignatieff came out highest for name recognition.