World Highlights

¤ North Korea appears to be signalling a desire to return to stalled six-country talks on its nuclear programmes and to be interested in breaking the deadlock, South Korea's foreign minister said.

Ban Ki-moon - a candidate for the post of UN secretary-general - also told Reuters a visit next month by Chinese President Hu Jintao to the United States could help create the right atmosphere for the nuclear talks to resume.

¤ Incoming Palestinian interior minister Saeed Seyam, chosen by Hamas to oversee three security services, says he will not order the arrest of militants carrying out attacks against Israel.

"The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation," Mr Seyam told Reuters in an interview. "The file of political detention must be closed."

¤ Washington lobbied the world's top suppliers of nuclear technology to back a US-India civilian nuclear energy deal that critics say threatens the global arms control regime, diplomats said.

The deal would enable India, long treated as a nuclear pariah, to receive American atomic technology and fuel, even though it has not signed the benchmark arms control pact, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and has atomic bombs.

¤ A row over economic nationalism in cross-border mergers flared as European Union leaders began a high-voltage summit to launch a common energy policy and measures to promote jobs and growth.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, battling for his political life in an April 9-10 general election, said he expected the two-day summit to debate protectionism but he would not raise France's role in engineering a merger of two French energy giants to stave off a potential Italian rival.