• Western and African diplomats called for the urgent deployment of peacekeepers to Somalia as al Qaeda's deputy leader urged defeated Islamists to launch an Iraq-style insurgency against Ethiopian forces there. The Islamists, who controlled much of southern Somalia since June, were forced into hiding after being routed from their strongholds by Ethiopian military defending Somalia's interim government in two weeks of full-scale warfare.

• A fresh nuclear test by North Korea would deepen the communist state's isolation, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said amid reports the North was preparing for its second atomic test.

• The New Year bombs that killed three people in the Thai capital were part of a concerted bid to undermine the post-coup government, the army chief said after rumours of another military putsch swept the jittery city.

• Belarus officials sought to defuse rising tension with neighbour and chief ally Russia, saying they want to negotiate an end to an acrimonious dispute over crude oil duties and transit fees.

• Gunmen in Nigeria's volatile southern Niger Delta abducted five Chinese workers in what appeared to be a kidnapping for ransom, authorities said.

• Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels set off a bomb in a bus in western Sri Lank, killing at least five people and wounding 30, the military said, as fighting raged in the north and east of the island.