Al Qaeda in Yemen offers bounty for U.S. ambassador

DUBAI (Reuters) - The Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda has offered a bounty for anyone who kills the U.S. ambassador to Yemen or an American soldier in the impoverished Arab state, a group that monitors Islamist websites said.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said it was offering three kilograms of gold for the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Sanaa, Gerald Feierstein, the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said, citing an audio released by militants.

AQAP will also pay 5 million rials ($23,350) to whoever kills any American soldier in Yemen, it said.

The offer, valid for six months, was made "to encourage our Muslim Ummah (nation), and to expand the circle of the jihad (holy war) by the masses," SITE said, citing the audio.

AQAP, mostly militants from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, is regarded by the United States as the most dangerous branch of the network founded by Osama bin Laden.

In September, AQAP urged Muslims to step up protests and kill U.S. diplomats in Muslim countries over a film denigrating the Prophet Mohammad, which it said was another chapter in the "crusader wars" against Islam.

The film provoked an outcry among Muslims, who deem any depiction of the Prophet as blasphemous and triggered violent attacks on embassies in countries in Asia and the Middle East.

Four U.S. officials including the ambassador to Libya were killed in the aftermath. The Pentagon said it had sent a platoon of Marines to Yemen after demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa.

A U.S. ally, Yemen is struggling against challenges on many fronts since mass protests forced veteran leader Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down in February after decades in power.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government is trying to re-establish order and unify the army.

Washington, which has pursued a campaign of assassination by drone and missile against suspected al Qaeda members, backed a military offensive in May to recapture areas of Abyan province. But militants have struck back with a series of bombings and killings.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; editing by Todd Eastham)

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Chavez suffers new post-surgery complications

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is suffering more complications linked to a respiratory infection that hit him after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba, his vice president said in a somber broadcast on Sunday.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba to visit Chavez in the hospital as supporters' fears grew for the ailing 58-year-old socialist leader, who has not been seen in public nor heard from in three weeks.

Chavez had already suffered unexpected bleeding caused by the six-hour operation on December 11 for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area. Officials said doctors then had to fight a respiratory infection.

"Just a few minutes ago we were with President Chavez. He greeted us and he himself talked about these complications," Maduro said in the broadcast, adding that the third set of complications arose because of the respiratory infection.

"Thanks to his physical and spiritual strength, Comandante Chavez is confronting this difficult situation."

Maduro, flanked by his wife Attorney-General Cilia Flores, Chavez's daughter Rosa Virginia and her husband, Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, said he would remain in Havana while Chavez's condition evolved.

He said Chavez's condition remained "delicate" - a term he has used since the day after the surgery, when he warned Venezuelans to prepare for difficult times and urged them to keep the president in their prayers.

"We trust that the avalanche of love and solidarity with Comandante Chavez, together with his immense will to live and the care of the best medical specialists, will help our president win this new battle," Maduro said.

A senior government official in Caracas said the New Year's Eve party in the capital's central Plaza Bolivar had been canceled. "Everyone pray for strength for our comandante to overcome this difficult moment," the official, Jacqueline Faria, added on Twitter after making the announcement.

OIL-FINANCED SOCIALISM

Chavez's resignation for health reasons, or his death, would upend politics in the OPEC nation where his personalized brand of oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor but a pariah to critics who call him a dictator.

His condition is being closely watched around Latin America, especially in other nations run by leftist governments, from Cuba to Bolivia, which depend on subsidized fuel shipments and other aid from Venezuela for their fragile economies.

Chavez has not provided details of the cancer that was first diagnosed in June 2011, leading to speculation among Venezuela's 29 million people and criticism from opposition leaders.

Chavez's allies have openly discussed the possibility that he may not be able to return to Venezuela to be inaugurated for his third six-year term as president on the constitutionally mandated date of January 10.

Senior "Chavista" officials have said the people's wishes were made clear when the president was re-elected in October, and that the constitution makes no provision for what happens if a president-elect cannot take office on January 10.

Opposition leaders say any postponement would be just the latest sign that Chavez is not in a fit state to govern and that new elections should be called to choose his replacement. If Chavez had to step down, new elections would be called within 30 days.

Opposition figures believe they have a better shot against Maduro, who was named earlier this month by Chavez as his heir apparent, than against the charismatic president who for 14 years has been nearly invincible at the ballot box.

Any constitutional dispute over succession could lead to a messy transition toward a post-Chavez era in the country that boasts the biggest oil reserves in the world.

Maduro has become the face of the government in Chavez's absence, imitating the president's bombastic style and sharp criticism of the United States and its "imperialist" policies.

In Sunday's broadcast, Maduro said Chavez sent New Year greetings to all Venezuelans, "especially the children, whom he carries in his heart always."

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Mario Naranjo; Editng by Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)

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In Indian student's gang rape, murder, two worlds collide

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - One of hundreds of attacks reported in New Delhi each year, the gang rape and murder of a medical student caught Indian authorities and political parties flat-footed, slow to see that the assault on a private bus had come to symbolize an epidemic of crime against women.

In the moments before the December 16 attack, the 23-year-old woman from India's urban middle class, who had recently qualified as a trainee physiotherapist in a private Delhi hospital, and her male friend, a software engineer, were walking home from a cinema at a shopping mall in south Delhi, according to a police reconstruction of events.

A bus, part of a fleet of privately owned vehicles used as public transport across the city of 16 million, and known as India's "rape capital", was at the same time heading toward them. Earlier that day, it had ferried school students but was now empty except for five men and a teenage boy, including its crew, police said. Most of the men were from the city's slums.

One of the six - all now charged with murder - lured the couple onto the bus, promising to drop the woman home, police have said, quoting from an initial statement that she gave from her hospital bed before her condition deteriorated rapidly.

A few minutes into the ride, her friend, 28, grew suspicious when the bus deviated from the supposed route and the men locked the door, according to her statement. They then taunted her for being out with a man late at night, prompting the friend to intervene and provoking an initial scuffle.

The attackers then beat him with a metal rod, knocking him unconscious, before turning on the woman who had tried to come to his defense. Police say the men admitted after their arrest to torturing and raping the student "to teach her a lesson".

At one point, the bus driver gave the wheel to another of the accused and dragged the woman by the neck to the back of the vehicle and forced himself upon her. The other five then took turns raping her and also driving the bus, keeping it circling through the busy streets of India's capital city, police said.

The woman was raped for nearly an hour before the men pushed a metal rod inside her, severely damaging her internal organs, and then dumped both her and her friend on the roadside, 8 km (5 miles) from where they had boarded it, police said.

Robbed of their clothes and belongings, they were found half naked, bleeding and unconscious later that night by a passerby, who alerted the police.

Last year, a rape was reported on average every 20 minutes in India. Just 26 percent of the cases resulted in convictions, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, which registered 24,206 rapes in 2011, up from 22,141 the previous year.

At first, authorities treated the assault on the medical student as one crime among many, and they were not prepared for the furious public reaction that led to running battles between protesters and police near the heart of government in New Delhi.

FAMILY ROLE MODEL

The woman, whose identity has been withheld by police, gave her statement to a sub-divisional magistrate on December 21 in the intensive care unit of Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital, according to media reports. She was undergoing multiple surgical procedures and her condition later began to rapidly worsen.

Ten days after the attack and still in a critical condition, she was flown to Singapore for specialist treatment. She died in Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital two days later. Her body was flown back to Delhi and cremated there on Sunday in a private ceremony.

Family members who had accompanied her to Singapore declined to speak to reporters, but relatives told the Times of India newspaper she had been a role model to her two younger brothers.

Unlike most traditional Indian families who only send their sons to fee-paying colleges or universities, her parents pinned their hopes on the daughter and took loans to fund her studies.

She was born and brought up in a middle class Delhi neighborhood after her family moved to the city more than 20 years ago from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Her male friend recorded his statement to a court days after the attack and helped police identify the six accused. He left for his hometown in Uttar Pradesh late on Saturday, missing the woman's funeral, media reported.

SHAME, ANGER IN SLUM

Four of the accused, all in custody, live in the narrow by-lanes of Ravi Das Camp, a slum about 17 km (11 miles) from the woman's home in southwest Delhi. Inside the slum - home to some 1,200 people who eke out a meager living as rickshaw pullers and tea hawkers - many demanded the death penalty for the accused.

"The incident has really shocked all of us. I don't know how I will get my children admitted to a school. The incident has earned a bad name to this place," said Pooja Kumari, a neighbor of one of the accused.

Girija Shankar, a student, said: "Our heads hang in shame because of the brutal act of these men. They must reap what they have sown."

The house of one of the accused was locked, with neighbors saying his family had left the city to escape the shame and anger. Meena, a 45-year-old neighbor, said she had wanted to join the protests that followed the rape, but was too scared.

"You never know when a mob may attack this slum and attack our houses. But we want to say we're as angry as the entire nation. We want them to be hanged," she said.

Two of the six alleged assailants come from outside Delhi, according to police. One is married with children and was arrested in his native village in Bihar state and the other, a juvenile, is a runaway from a broken home in Uttar Pradesh.

In India, murder is punishable by death by hanging, except in the case of offenders aged below 18.

(Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty and Nita Bhalla; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Ian Geoghegan)

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Egypt's leader sees currency stabilizing "within days"

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's pound fell to a record low on Monday as the president signaled his government would allow it to depreciate slowly for several more days to stop a drain on foreign reserves that has driven the economy into crisis since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Hit by a new bout of political turmoil in the last month, the pound had weakened to a record low on Sunday at a new dollar auction brought in by the central bank. It fell further at a second auction on Monday, last trading at 6.37 to the dollar on the interbank market.

The drop means the central bank has allowed the pound to slide by almost 3 percent over the last two days after limiting its decline to only 6 percent since the uprising that removed Mubarak from power almost two years ago.

The pound's fall, which is certain to increase the price of imported staples such as tea and sugar, underlines the economic crisis facing President Mohamed Mursi as his administration tries to contain the political fall-out of his move to fast-track a contentious new constitution passed into law last week.

Egyptians panicked by street clashes between Mursi's Islamist backers and his more secular-minded opponents on the streets of Cairo and other cities have rushed to change their pounds into dollars in recent weeks, fearing it would be devalued further.

"The market will return to stability," Mursi told Arab journalists on Sunday evening, the state news agency MENA reported.

The pound's fall "does not worry or scare us, and within days matters will balance out," he said.

Having just sold their last dollar bills, dealers at one Cairo foreign exchange bureau did not bother changing their price board when the new low appeared on their trading screens.

"He took our last dollars," said one of the traders, pointing to a man walking out of the door.

Outside, another man told a friend his dollar hunt had failed. "They have no dollars. What can I do?" he said by mobile phone. "I went to many dealers and could not find dollars."

The fall has been driven mainly by ordinary citizens who have been trying to turn their savings into foreign currency, worried that the pound will weaken further because of the latest political turmoil.

The crisis wiped 10 percent off the value of Egyptian stocks when it erupted in late November. But the main index has mostly recovered since then, climbing in the two sessions since the introduction of the new foreign currency system.

Market participants attribute the rise to buying by Arab and international investors using the cheaper pound to bargain hunt.

FREE FLOATING POUND

The auctions are part of a shift announced on Saturday and designed to conserve foreign reserves, which the bank says are now at "critical" levels that cover just three months of the food, fuel and other goods Egypt imports.

Bankers have described the new system as a move towards establishing a free market value for the pound, which has been tightly controlled since a managed devaluation which ended in 2004.

The head of the Egyptian banking federation said the new system was an "important first step" towards a free float.

In remarks to MENA, Tarek Amer, who is also chairman of Egypt's largest bank, state-owned National Bank of Egypt, said the new system was a success on its first day and had "significantly reduced" demand for dollars.

The central bank has sold about $75 million at each of Sunday's and Monday's auctions.

The run on the pound prompted officials last week to impose controls on how much cash could be physically carried out of the country. Security men at one Cairo bank branch had to remove one customer angered by a $10,000 limit on how much currency he could withdraw, witnesses said.

The changes announced on Saturday include regular foreign currency auctions and also limit how much foreign currency companies can withdraw at a time.

The central bank had spent more than $20 billion - or more than half of its reserves - over the past two years to defend the currency. The reserves fell by a further $448 million in November to about $15 billion.

Prices of imports have already started to rise. Pyramid Oil Field, a firm that imports chemicals for use in water treatment and oil fields, had put up its prices by 10 to 15 percent last week, fearing a further weakening of the pound.

"This instability obliges you to increase the price, to have a safety factor," said Ashraf el-Gamal, president and managing director of the company, told Reuters. "From now on, the contracts will be of a very short validity."

To be on the safe side, he was projecting that the pound would weaken to stand at 9 against the euro, compared to a previous level of 8.

ECONOMY FRAGILE

Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said on Sunday that the economy was in "a very difficult and fragile" situation, adding that he expected talks with the International Monetary Fund on a $4.8 billion loan to resume in January.

Egypt won preliminary approval in November from the IMF for the loan, but delayed seeking final approval until January after it suspended a series of tax increases to allow more time to explain a heavily criticized package of economic austerity measures to the public.

Kandil's efforts to revive the economy have been hit by the latest turmoil, which scared off tourists who had begun to return. On the eve of the anti-Mubarak revolt, Egypt's tourism industry accounted for one in eight jobs.

Mursi hoped that the passage of a new constitution would stabilize Egypt's politics, giving him space to implement economic reforms and attract investment. The constitution, written by Mursi's Islamist allies, was approved in a popular referendum in December.

But it remains the focus of controversy, and the opposition is likely to seize upon austerity measures demanded under an IMF deal as a stick to beat the Muslim Brotherhood ahead of a parliamentary vote expected in early 2013.

Two-fifths of Egypt's 84 million population live around the poverty line and depend on subsidies that are straining the treasury.

Gamal of Pyramid Oil Field said he knew of at least three foreign companies that were hesitant to make large investments in the country because of the instability.

"They are feeling insecure because of everything that is happening," he said. "One is looking to invest billions."

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry; Writing by Tom Perry and Patrick Werr; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Assad's forces battle to retake Damascus suburb

AMMAN (Reuters) - Elite Syrian government troops backed by tanks battled on Monday to recapture a strategic Damascus suburb from rebels who have advanced within striking distance of the center of Syria's capital.

Five people, including a child, died from army rocket fire that hit the Daraya suburb during the fighting, opposition activists said. Daraya is part of a semi-circle of Sunni Muslim suburbs south of the capital that have been at the forefront of the 21-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.

"This is the biggest attack on Daraya in two months. An armored column is trying to advance but it is being held (back) by the Free Syrian Army," said Abu Kinan, an opposition activist in the area, referring to a rebel group.

Clashes were also reported near the airport in Aleppo, Syria's largest city, which is in the north. Insurgents have made that airport a target in the hope of limiting government access to Aleppo, which is largely under rebel control.

Rebels have taken much of the north and east of Syria over the past six months, but government forces still hold most of the densely populated southwest around the capital, the main north-south highway and the Mediterranean coast.

Government forces scored a victory on Saturday, pushing rebels out of Deir Baalbeh, a district in Homs, an important central city that straddles the highway linking Damascus with the north and the Mediterranean.

Some opposition activists have said scores or even hundreds of people were executed in Deir Baalbeh by troops that seized it after several days of fighting. However, reports of killings there on a large scale could not be verified.

More than 45,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the 21-month war, the longest and deadliest of the revolts that began throughout the Arab world two years ago. Mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are fighting to topple Assad, a member of the Alawite minority sect whose family has ruled Syria since his father seized power 42 years ago in a coup.

The opposition refuses to hold peace talks unless Assad relinquishes power, and military successes over the last six months have reinforced its belief it can drive him out by force.

However, government troops still heavily outgun the fighters and maintain air bases scattered across the country.

The Damascus suburbs have become one of the major fronts of the war, with the rebels hoping to finally bring their uprising to the capital, heart of Assad's power.

Activist Abu Kinan said that tens of thousands of civilians had fled Daraya during weeks of government assault on the suburb, but that 5,000 remained, along with hundreds of rebels. Daraya is located near the main southern highway connecting Damascus to the Jordanian border 85 km (50 miles) to the south.

Activists said Republican Guard forces are trying to push back rebels who have been slowly advancing from the outskirts of Damascus to within striking distance of government targets and central districts inhabited by Assad's Alawite minority sect.

Assad's forces have mostly relied on aerial and artillery bombardment, rather than infantry. Rebels have been able take outlying towns and have clashed with government troops near Damascus International Airport, halting flights by foreign airlines.

Another activist in Damascus with links to rebels, who did not want to be named, said Daraya has been a firing position for rebels using mortars and homemade rockets. From it, they have been able to hit a huge presidential complex located on a hilltop overlooking Damascus and target pro-Assad shabbiha militia in an Alawite enclave nearby known as Mezze 86.

"So far they have missed the palace but they are getting better. I think the regime has realized that it no longer can afford to have such a threat so close by, but it has failed to overrun Daraya before," he said.

"HELL OR THE POLITICAL PROCESS"

The opposition is backed by most Western and Arab states, while Assad has enjoyed the diplomatic protection of Moscow, which sells arms to his government and maintains a naval base in one of his ports.

Western countries have been searching for signs that Moscow is lifting its protection of Assad, hoping that would bring him down much as Russia's withdrawal of support heralded the fall of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic 12 years ago.

Moscow said on Saturday that it has no power to make Assad leave office, and accused the rebels of prolonging the bloodshed by refusing to negotiate with him.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has called on outside powers to push all sides to talk, arguing that Syria faces a choice of "hell or the political process".

Brahimi is touting a peace plan agreed to in principle by international powers six months ago, but the plan does not explicitly call for Assad to be excluded from power, which the opposition regards as a precondition to any talks.

The opposition-linked Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that rebels clashed with government troops near Aleppo's international airport. Rami Abdelrahman, the British-based Observatory's director, told Reuters by phone that fighting flared on Sunday night and continued into Monday morning.

He said no flights were departing or arriving from the airport. Syria's state airline canceled at least one flight there over the weekend.

Nevertheless, the government's seizure of Deir Baalbeh in Homs is a reminder that its forces are still capable of recapturing territory from the lightly armed rebels. Syria's state news agency SANA said government forces seized a large cache of weapons and ammunition after capturing the district.

(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Oliver Holmes and Mark Heinrich)

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Bombs kill 16 across Iraq as sectarian strife grows

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Explosions killed at least 16 people and wounded 76 across Iraq on Monday, police said, underlining sectarian and ethnic divisions that threaten to further destabilize the country a year after U.S. troops left.

Tensions between Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year. Militants strike almost daily and have staged at least one big attack a month.

The latest violence followed more than a week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community.

No group claimed responsibility for any of Monday's attacks, which targeted government officials, police patrols and members of both the Sunni and Shi'ite sects.

Seven people from the same Sunni family were killed by a bomb planted near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad.

In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla, also in the south, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing two other people, police said.

"We heard the sound of a big explosion and the windows of our office shattered. We immediately lay on the ground," said 28-year-old Mohammed Ahmed, who works at a hospital near the site of the explosion.

"After a few minutes I stood up and went to the windows to see what happened. I saw flames and people lying on the ground."

In the capital Baghdad, five people were killed by a parked car bomb targeting pilgrims before a Shi'ite religious rite this week, police and hospital sources said.

Although violence is far lower than during the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, about 2,000 people have been killed in Iraq this year following the withdrawal last December of U.S. troops, who led an invasion in 2003 to overthrow Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

SUNNIS PROTEST

Monday's violence also included a series of blasts that killed three people in Iraq's disputed territories, over which both the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region claim jurisdiction.

Two of those deaths were in the oil-producing, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, where a bomb exploded as a police team tried to defuse it.

Baghdad and Kurdistan are locked in a feud over land and oil rights and recently deployed their respective armies to the swathe of territory along their contested internal boundary, where they are currently facing off against one other.

Efforts to ease the standoff stalled when President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence, suffered a stroke and was flown abroad for medical care in December.

Maliki then detained the bodyguards of his Sunni finance minister, which ignited anti-government protests in the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold on the border with Syria.

A lecturer in law at Baghdad University said the protests could help create the conditions for militant Islamist groups like al Qaeda to thrive.

"Raising tension in Anbar and other provinces with mainly Sunni populations is definitely playing into the hands of al Qaeda and other insurgent groups," Ahmed Younis said.

More than 1,000 people protested in the city of Samarra on Monday and rallies continued in Ramadi, centre of the protests, and in Mosul, where about 500 people took to the streets.

Protesters are demanding an end to what they see as the marginalization of Sunnis, who dominated the country until the U.S.-led invasion. They want Maliki to abolish anti-terrorism laws they say are used to persecute them.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, himself a Sunni, was forced to flee a protest in Ramadi when demonstrators pelted him with stones and bottles.

The civil war in neighboring Syria, where majority Sunnis are fighting to topple a ruler backed by Shi'ite Iran, is also whipping up sectarian sentiment in Iraq.

"The toppling of President Bashar al-Assad and empowerment of Sunnis (in Syria) will definitely encourage al Qaeda to regain ground," Younis said.

(Reporting by Ali al-Rubaie in Hilla, Mustafa Mahmoud and Omar Mohammed in Kirkuk, Ali Mohammed in Baquba and Ahmed Rasheed and Aseel Kami in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Pakistan releases more Afghan Taliban members: official

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has freed four more Afghan Taliban prisoners, including a former justice minister, a Pakistani government official said on Monday, in another sign Islamabad is supporting efforts to start formal peace talks with the militant group.

Afghanistan has been pressing Pakistan to free Taliban members who could help promote reconciliation before most NATO combat troops withdraw before the end of 2014.

"Pakistan released four Taliban prisoners," the Pakistani official told Reuters.

Former Taliban justice minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi and three others were released, said the official. An Afghan official confirmed their release.

Pakistan, which has long been accused of using insurgent groups such as the Taliban and the Haqqani network, has freed a batch of mid-level Taliban members in recent weeks.

A senior Afghan government official told Reuters this month that Pakistan was genuine about backing the Afghan peace process and shares the Kabul government's goal of transforming the Taliban insurgency into a political movement.

Regional power Pakistan is seen as critical to U.S. and Afghan efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan, a task gaining urgency before the end of the U.S. combat mission in 2014.

Pakistan's powerful army chief has made reconciling warring factions in Afghanistan a priority, Pakistani military officials and Western diplomats told Reuters, the clearest signal yet that Islamabad means business in promoting peace.

General Ashfaq Kayani, arguably the most powerful man in Pakistan, is backing dialogue partly due to fears that the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan could energize a resilient insurgency straddling the shared frontier, according to commanders deployed in the region.

(Reporting by Katharine Houreld and Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Writing by Michaael Georgy; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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Desperate for weapons, Syrian rebels make their own, fix tanks

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria (Reuters) - At a converted warehouse in the midst of a block of residential homes in a northern Syrian town, men are hard at work at giant lathes, shavings of metal gathering around them.

Sacks of potassium nitrate and sugar lie nearby.

In a neat row against the wall is the finished product, homemade mortars. Syrian rebels say they have been forced to make them because their calls for heavy weapons and ammunition to fight President Bashar al-Assad have gone unanswered.

"No one's giving us any support. So we're working on our own to strike Bashar," said a bearded man spinning the metal to create the warhead.

Using the Internet, the workshop of about seven men work together to try and perfect the crude weapons. For explosives, they pick out TNT from unexploded rockets that Assad's forces have fired towards them and repackage them into their own weapons. Each gave different estimates of the mortars' range.

"We're volunteers, we were workers, we were never soldiers. They're locally made. They don't have the strength of the regime's rockets, but they are having good effects," said Abu Mohammed, who said the mortars created a 3-1/2 meter crater.

Another worker said the mortars, which take about a day to make, could reach a distance of 6 km (almost 4 miles).

Although the rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslim fighters, have made big gains in the northern and eastern parts of Syria in the 21-month conflict, they are outgunned by Assad's forces.

Some rebel groups are receiving supplies from Gulf states, and Western countries say they are giving non-lethal aid. But many rebels say they have not received anything.

Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told Reuters last week that his forces are fighting without any help from the Western and Arab governments which want Assad removed from power.

"We aren't able to get any weapons from abroad. We have nothing except for the rifle to fight with," said another man at the workshop.

OLD TANKS

The success rate of the weapons is questionable. Two men said the mortars hit 80 to 90 percent of the targets, but there have been problems. Sometimes the mortars do not detonate, other times they explode prematurely.

"The more we practice, the more experience we get," said one of the men, explaining how they discovered that if they let the propelling agent mixture set for too long it absorbed humidity, which in turn stopped the mortar from detonating.

At one of the Aleppo frontline positions, rebels fired the mortars from a homemade tube, fashioned from piping on a mount made from a car axle.

The rebels have also been working on refurbishing weaponry acquired during takeovers of Assad's military bases.

Parked in a residential street, a group of men have been working on fixing a T-72 tank whose gear box was blown.

Abu Jumaa, one of the mechanics working on the 1970s tank, said fighters had taken it from an infantry college in north Syria that had recently fallen to rebel forces.

"We have no tanks, no planes, no artillery. All we have is what we get in spoils and we go to war against him (Assad) with what we get. That's the reality. We're forced to do this," he told Reuters.

"These tanks are useless in the first place. It can't be called a tank, It's a lump of scrap iron," he said gesturing at the chipped army green metal.

Rebel fighters on the frontline consistently complain of shortages of weapons and ammunition that have forced them to stop advances and focus on keeping the ground they have gained.

"We get 3,000 bullets a month. No anti-aircraft missiles ... everything is from the military bases (we take over)," said one young rebel fighter from the Supporters of Mohammed Brigade, wearing a plaid yellow and black turban.

Even though the rebels have managed to seize large quantities of weapons from military bases, they struggle with a chronic shortage of ammunition and weapons to target Assad's fighter jets.

"You see how the planes are striking all of us, not differentiating between old and young ... God has helped us, we've made these rockets and we're using them to hit back at them all over again," said Abu Mohammed.

(Editing by Peter Graff and Robin Pomeroy)

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U.N. expert condemns move to oust Sri Lanka's chief justice

GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations expert on Monday criticized Sri Lanka's move to impeach its chief justice, saying it was part of a pattern of attacks on lawyers and a bid to stop judges carrying out their work independently of politicians.

Parliament could vote next month to impeach Shirani Bandaranayake, the first woman to head Sri Lanka's Supreme Court, after she was found guilty by a parliamentary panel of financial irregularities and a failure to declare assets.

The case risks a destabilizing clash between President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government and the judiciary. Opposition parties have withdrawn from the process, saying it was unfair.

Gabriela Knaul, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, said the case against Bandaranayake was part of a pattern of attacks and threats against members of the judiciary and lawyers and interference in their work.

"The recent steps taken by the executive and legislative towards impeaching the chief justice appear to be the culminating point of a series of attacks against the judiciary for asserting its independence," Knaul said in a statement.

"It is of high concern to me that the procedure for the removal of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is extremely politicized and characterized by lack of transparency, lack of clarity in the proceedings, as well as lack of respect for the fundamental guarantees of due process and fair trial," she said.

A parliamentary impeachment panel found Bandaranayake guilty on three counts earlier this month. She has appealed against the decision and the United States, the United Nations and Commonwealth have all raised concerns about the process.

Knaul said article 107 of the Sri Lankan constitution, read together with Standing Orders of Parliament, contravened international human rights law and needed amending so that disciplinary proceedings against judges were conducted by independent commissions.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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Senate report faults State Department, intelligence on Benghazi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department's decision to keep the U.S. mission in Benghazi open despite inadequate security and increasingly dangerous threat assessments before it was attacked in September was a "grievous mistake," a Senate report said on Monday.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee's report about the September 11 attacks on the U.S. mission and a nearby annex, which killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, faulted intelligence agencies for not having enough focus on Libyan extremists. It also faulted the State Department for waiting for specific warnings instead of acting on security.

The assessment follows a scathing report by an independent State Department accountability review board that resulted in a top security official and three others at the department stepping down.

The attack, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens died, has put diplomatic security practices at posts in insecure areas under scrutiny and raised questions about whether intelligence on terrorism in the region was adequate.

The Senate report said the lack of specific intelligence of an imminent threat in Benghazi "may reflect a failure" in the intelligence community's focus on terrorist groups that have weak or no operational ties to al Qaeda and its affiliates.

"With Osama bin Laden dead and core al Qaeda weakened, a new collection of violent Islamist extremist organizations and cells have emerged in the last two to three years," the report said. That trend has been seen in the "Arab Spring" countries undergoing political transition or military conflict, it said.

The report recommended that U.S. intelligence agencies "broaden and deepen their focus in Libya and beyond, on nascent violent Islamist extremist groups in the region that lack strong operational ties to core al Qaeda or its main affiliate groups."

Neither the Senate report nor the unclassified accountability review board report pinned blame for the Benghazi attack on a specific group. The FBI is investigating who was behind the assaults.

President Barack Obama, in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, said the United States had some "very good leads" about who carried out the attacks. He did not provide any details.

The Senate committee report said the State Department should not have waited for specific warnings before acting on improving security in Benghazi.

It also said that it was widely known that the post-revolution Libyan government was "incapable of performing its duty to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel," but the State Department failed to take adequate steps to fill the security gap.

"Despite the inability of the Libyan government to fulfill its duties to secure the facility, the increasingly dangerous threat assessments, and a particularly vulnerable facility, the Department of State officials did not conclude the facility in Benghazi should be closed or temporarily shut down," the report said. "That was a grievous mistake."

(Editing by Warren Strobel and David Brunnstrom)

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Ukraine central bank head named as deputy prime minister

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich on Monday named a member of his inner circle, central bank head Serhiy Arbuzov, as deputy prime minister, making him an important player in upcoming talks with the IMF.

The appointment to the number-two government position also makes Arbuzov a likely successor to Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

The first major task of the new cabinet will be to secure a new bailout program from the International Monetary Fund.

An IMF mission is due to visit Ukraine late in January for what are expected to be tough talks on nailing down a new stand-by arrangement.

Ukraine needs to repay or refinance more than $9 billion debt falling due to foreign creditors in 2013, including $6.4 billion owed to the IMF which Ukraine hopes to refinance.

More often than not, the government and the central bank have worked together smoothly, avoiding public criticism of each other's policies. But Arbuzov is seen widely as closer to Yanukovich than his new boss Azarov.

"Financial and economic policy is now in the hands of the 'family'," said political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, referring to Yanukovich's relatives and close associates.

Replacing Azarov with Arbuzov "looks almost inevitable next year. It is just a matter of time", he added.

Although Arbuzov comes across as media-shy and avoided open arguments with the government, official statements and leaked documents from the central bank indicated his opinions on economic matters sometimes differed from those of Azarov.

In June 2011, UNIAN news agency published a leaked letter in which Arbuzov told Azarov his government was losing credibility after refusing to carry out reforms recommended by the IMF.

The IMF has urged Kiev to pass on to ordinary Ukrainians more of the cost of the gas it buys at high prices from Russia, subsidies which are a large burden on the budget. Azarov has so far refused to take the unpopular step, although Kiev may have to become more flexible.

The government quit on December 3 after an October parliamentary election and its members have since served in an interim capacity, apart from Azarov who was reappointed on December 13.

Arbuzov, 36, will take over as first deputy prime minister from Valery Khoroshkovsky who quit the cabinet this month in protest at Azarov's re-appointment.

FAMILY TIES

According to a separate decree issued by Yanukovich on Monday, Arbuzov will be in charge of economy, trade, state finances, agriculture and social policy.

Yanukovich's office said Yuri Kolobov, Arbuzov's former deputy at the central bank, would remain finance minister.

The president named former Energy Minister Yuri Boiko, former regional governor Olexander Vilkul and former Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko as deputy prime ministers.

It was not clear who would succeed Arbuzov at the central bank but last week Boris Pryhodko, head of treasury at state-run Oshchadny Bank, was named its new first deputy chairman.

Arbuzov emerged from relative obscurity to become a major figure in Kiev in September 2010 when he was named first deputy chairman of the central bank in a surprise reshuffle.

Less than four months later, Yanukovich named him central bank head, a position he has held since.

Before joining the central bank, Arbuzov, who was born and educated in Donetsk - Yanukovich's home region and power base - spent four months working at the state-owned Ukreximbank and his earlier career as a financier was in the private sector.

In particular, Arbuzov had worked at the Ukrainian Business Bank, a Donetsk-based lender which according to Ukrainian media is linked to Yanukovich's elder son Oleksandr.

Arbuzov's mother Valentina Arbuzova is the chief executive of the All-Ukrainian Development Bank, another private bank owned by Oleksandr Yanukovich.

Arbuzov reshuffled the central bank's senior management but largely continued the policies of the previous administration such as maintaining the hryvnia's peg to the dollar.

The two will need to work hard to revive Ukraine's economy, which shrank by 1.3 percent year on year in the third quarter as global demand for steel, the main Ukrainian export, fell.

(Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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India clamps down on gang-rape protests, PM appeals for calm

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian authorities throttled movement in the heart of the capital on Monday, shutting roads and railway stations in a bid to restore law and order after police fought pitched battles with protesters enraged by the gang rape of a young woman.

In an unusual televised address, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for calm following the weekend clashes in New Delhi and vowed to punish the rapists for their "monstrous" crime.

Singh's government, often accused by critics of being out of touch with the aspirations of many Indians, has been caught off-guard by the depth of the popular outrage as protests have snowballed and spread to other cities. India is seen as one of the most unsafe places in the world to be a woman.

Instead of channeling the outrage, the government has found itself on the defensive over the use of force against the protesters and complaints that it has done little in its eight years in power to create a safer environment for women.

The protests have been the biggest in the capital since 2011 demonstrations against corruption that rocked the government.

"People are not reacting to just one rape case. They are reacting to the general malaise, the frustration with the leadership. There is a feeling that the leadership is completely disconnected," said political analyst Neerja Chowdhury.

Police barricaded roads leading to India Gate, an imposing Arc de Triomphe-style war memorial in the center of the city, that has become a hub of the protests by mostly college students. Many metro rail stations in fog-shrouded Delhi were also closed, crippling movement around the city of 16 million.

The protests overshadowed an official visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin and disrupted his schedule.

The 23-year-old victim of the December 16 attack, who was beaten, raped for almost an hour and thrown out of a moving bus in New Delhi, was still in a critical condition on respiratory support, doctors said.

In the weekend spasm of violent protests, police use batons, teargas and water cannon against demonstrators around the capital. Protests and candle-light vigils have also taken place in other Indian cities but they have been more peaceful.

"I appeal to all concerned citizens to maintain peace and calm. I assure you we will make all possible efforts to ensure security and safety of women in this country," Singh said in his televised address to the nation.

Singh has been under fire for remaining largely silent since the rape. He issued a statement for the first time on Sunday, a week after the crime. Sonia Gandhi, chief of the ruling Congress Party, has met some of the protesters to hear their demands.

Comments by political commentators, sociologists and protesters suggest the rape has tapped into a deep well of frustration that many Indians have over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social and economic issues.

"There is a huge amount of anger. People are deeply upset that despite so many incidents there has not been much response from the state and the government," said social activist Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research in Delhi.

SOCIAL MEDIA SITES DRIVE PROTESTS

New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures. A global poll by Thomson Reuters Foundation in June found that India was the worst place in the world to be a woman because of high rates of infanticide, child marriage and slavery.

Since last week's rape, the authorities have promised better police patrolling to ensure safety for women returning from work and entertainment districts, more buses at night, and fast-track courts for swift verdicts on cases of rape and sexual assaults.

But protesters view those measures as inadequate and are looking for the government to take a firmer stand on sexual assaults countrywide, most of which go unreported.

Reported rape cases in India have increased by 9.2 percent to 24,206 cases in 2011 from 22,172 the previous year, according to the latest figures from the National Crime Record Bureau,

"This is not about that one rape," said aspiring fashion designer Shruti Sharma, 24, at a protest in Delhi on Monday.

"This is about how crime is rampant in our cities. We are angry at the government for not ensuring the safety of its citizens. The judiciary is slow. Cases take too long."

Opposition political parties, normally quick to exploit the government's vulnerabilities, have largely been sidelined in the protests, which have mostly been organized through social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The protesters come from all walks of life but many are young and middle class. Political commentators see their involvement as evidence of growing frustration with the government's focus on poor and rural voters and a failure to pass on the benefits of a decade of rapid economic growth.

So far, however, the protesters' focus has been on the rape case rather than on other grievances.

(Additional reporting By Rajesh Kumar Singh and Satarupa Bhattacharjya in New Delhi, Sujoy Dhar in Kolkata, Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow, Ashok Pahalwan in Jammu and , writing by Ross Colvin,; Editing by John Chalmers and Robert Birsel)

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Afghan policewoman kills coalition contractor in Kabul: NATO

KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan woman wearing a police uniform shot dead on Monday a civilian contractor working for Western forces in the police chief's compound in Kabul, NATO said.

The incident is likely to raise troubling questions about the direction of an unpopular war.

It appeared to be the first time that a woman member of Afghanistan's security forces carried out such an attack.

There were conflicting reports about the victim.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said a U.S. police adviser was killed by an Afghan policewoman. Then ISAF said in a statement only that it was a "contracted civilian employee" who was killed.

Mohammad Zahir, head of the police criminal investigation department, described the incident as an "insider attack" in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on Western troops they are supposed to be working with. He initially said the victim was a U.S. soldier.

After more than 10 years of war, militants are capable of striking Western targets in the heart of the capital, and foreign forces worry that Afghan police and military forces they are supposed to work with can suddenly turn on them.

The policewoman approached her victim as he was walking in the heavily guarded police chief's compound in a bustling area of Kabul. She then drew a pistol and shot him once, a senior police official told Reuters.

The police complex is close to the Interior Ministry where in February, two American officers were shot dead at close range at a time anger gripped the country over the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book at a NATO base.

"She is now under interrogation. She is crying and saying 'what have I done'," said the official, of the police officer who worked in a section of the Interior Ministry responsible for gender awareness issues.

TIPS FOR TROOPS

The insider incidents, also known as green-on-blue attacks, have undermined trust between coalition and Afghan forces who are under mounting pressure to contain the Taliban insurgency before most NATO combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Security responsibilities in a country plagued by conflict for decades will be handed to Afghan security forces.

Many Afghans fear a civil war like one dominated by warlords after the withdrawal of Soviet occupying forces in 1989 could erupt again, or the Taliban will make another push to seize power if they reject a nascent peace process.

At least 52 members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force have been killed this year by Afghans wearing police or army uniforms.

Insider attacks now account for one in every five combat deaths suffered by NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, and 16 percent of all U.S. combat casualties, according to 2012 data.

Hoping to stop the increase in the attacks, Afghan Defense Ministry officials have given their troops tips in foreign culture.

They are told not to be offended by a hearty pat on the back or an American soldier asking after your wife's health.

NATO attributes only about a quarter of the attacks to the Taliban, saying the rest are caused by personal grievances and misunderstandings. Last year, there were 35 deaths in such attacks.

Afghan forces are vulnerable to "insider attacks" of their own. In Jawzjan province in the north, a police commander shot and killed five comrades overnight, the Interior Ministry said.

Last year, he defected from the Taliban, said the ministry.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the commander had rejoined the Taliban. That could not be confirmed.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Syria envoy meets Assad as opposition frustration grows

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi discussed solving the country's conflict with President Bashar al-Assad on Monday, but the opposition expressed deepening frustration with the mission following what it called the latest massacre of civilians.

Underlining how rebels are taking the battle close to Assad's doorstep, the U.N. and Arab League envoy had to drive to Damascus from Lebanon on the eve of the meeting as fighting around the international airport made it impossible to fly in.

Brahimi said his talks with Assad had dealt with possible solutions to a crisis that has killed more than 44,000 people, according to activists.

"I told him what I was seeing abroad and about the meetings I had with different officials in the region and abroad," Brahimi told reporters. "The situation in Syria still is a reason for worry. We hope that all the sides work toward the solution, as the Syrian people want."

Monday's meeting was Brahimi's third with Assad and violence has greatly escalated since the series began.

Syria's opposition vented its anger at what it called a silence over the unabated killing of civilians by Assad's forces. On Sunday, dozens of people were killed in the central town of Halfaya and many more wounded. Activists blamed an air strike that hit a bakery where a crowd was queuing in Halfaya, which was seized by rebels last week.

"Silence over the massacres committed against the Syrian people is blackmail and a means to pressure the people, their revolution, and their leaders," said Moaz Alkhatib, who heads the opposition National Coalition.

"The Halfaya massacre is not just a massacre but a message from both those who are part of the regime and those who support it, and in short it is: Either you die or you accept the enslavement that we will force upon you," he wrote on his Facebook page.

However, Alkhatib did not accuse anybody directly for remaining silent over what would be one of the deadliest air strikes of the civil war.

Activists also said rebels in central Hama province shot down a government fighter jet on Monday, in clashes outside a village loyal to Assad.

Rebels have captured several military sites around the country. Damascus is now being dragged into the unrest, with fighting in its southern districts and the suburbs on its eastern outskirts.

The army has hit back at rebel-held areas near Damascus with daily air raids and artillery strikes that have sent thousands fleeing to the city center and over the border to Lebanon.

Brahimi is the successor of envoy Kofi Annan, who resigned in August after a failed ceasefire attempt and blamed both rising militarization in Syria and diplomatic deadlock abroad.

Little seems to have changed since then. Brahimi's own ceasefire efforts in October failed after four days.

Western powers such as the United States, which back the opposition, continue to call for Assad's removal. Syria's main arms supplier Russia has given mixed signals. Most recently the foreign minister of Russia, which along with China has blocked U.N. resolutions against Assad, said the president "is not going anywhere".

Brahimi's plan for an end to the Syrian crisis centers on a transitional government, but has left vague Assad's role. The opposition rejects anything but Assad's overthrow and says the government crackdown has been too fierce to accept dialogue.

POISON GAS REPORTS

With rebel gains growing, the army has been increasingly relying on its superior weaponry. It has used air strikes and even long range, scud-type missiles, according to U.S. and NATO reports.

Western powers have warned Assad that using chemical weapons would be a "red line", which they implied would draw international involvement in the conflict.

Syria repeated on Sunday that it would never use chemical weapons, but activists released reports later that day of what they said was a poison gas attack in the city of Homs.

The reports are difficult to confirm, as the government restricts media access in Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gathered activist accounts of the incident, which said that six rebel fighters were killed after inhaling smoke on the front line of Homs's urban battleground.

"White smoke without a smell spread throughout the area after regime forces threw grenades that emitted white smoke when they hit a wall," the Observatory said. "Those who inhaled the gas said they felt dizzy and suffered headaches and some suffered seizures."

The Observatory, a British-based group with a network of activists across the country, called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to send a medical team to the area to determine what had happened.

A previous report of poison gas was determined to be false by some military experts, but none has commented on the reported Homs attack.

(editing by David Stamp)

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Macedonians brawl inside, outside parliament over 2013 budget

SKOPJE (Reuters) - Government and opposition deputies brawled inside Macedonia's parliament and their supporters hurled stones and bottles at each other outside on Monday in an escalating dispute over the proposed 2013 state budget.

Thousands of pro- and anti-government demonstrators clashed in the centre of the capital Skopje outside parliament. Special police in riot gear intervened to separate the two groups, and local media said at least six people were hurt.

Inside parliament, security guards had to evacuate parliament speaker Trajko Veljanovski from the plenary hall as opposition deputies scuffled with pro-government counterparts in an effort to prevent the opening of the debate.

Opposition deputies left the building to join supporters in the streets and the government then pushed through a 64-4 vote in favor of the budget proposal. Parliament has 120 members.

Last month the small Balkan republic's centre-right government proposed a 148-billion-denari ($3.2 billion) budget for 2013 with the deficit projected at 3.5 percent of gross domestic product and growth at two percent of GDP.

The left-wing opposition faulted the proposal as profligate at a time of economic downturn and asked for a cut equivalent to about $260 million. The government refused but the opposition then submitted about a thousand amendments to the draft.

Opposition leaders had accused the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of suspending democracy by seeking to vote on the budget in a plenary session before their proposed amendments were addressed in committees.

"If the government continues like that, it will suspend the constitution and ... kill democracy in Macedonia before our very eyes," Branko Crvenkovski, head of the opposition Social Democrats, said before the vote.

Gruevski shot back: "This is all about the vanity of one man, of (Branko) Crvenkovski and his political survival."

Macedonia's economy resurfaced from two quarters of recession in the third quarter of 2012, posting 0.3 percent GDP growth. The central bank has cut its 2012 growth forecast to zero from 2.4 percent, reflecting the negative effect of the euro zone crisis across the Western Balkans, but sees growth perking up to 2.6 percent in 2013. ($1 = 0.7590 euros)

(Writing by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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No new vote in Venezuela if Chavez sworn in late: official

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will not call fresh elections if Hugo Chavez's cancer prevents him from taking office by January 10, the head of Congress said on Saturday, despite a constitutional mandate that the swearing-in take place on that date.

Chavez is recovering in Cuba from a six-hour cancer operation that followed his October re-election. The socialist leader has not been heard from for nearly two weeks, raising doubts as to whether he will be fit to continue governing.

Opposition leaders may pounce on the issue of the swearing-in date to demand that authorities call fresh elections because of Chavez's apparently critical state of health due to an undisclosed type of cancer in the pelvic region.

A constitutional dispute over succession could lead to a messy transition toward a post-Chavez era in the South American nation with the world's largest oil reserves.

"Since Chavez might not be here in on January 10, (the opposition) hopes the National Assembly will call elections within 30 days. They're wrong. Dead wrong," said Diosdado Cabello, the National Assembly's president and one of Chavez's closest allies, during a ceremony to swear in a recently elected governor.

"That's not going to happen because our president is named Hugo Chavez, he was reelected and is in the hearts of all Venezuelans."

He suggested Chavez may need more time to recover from his surgery. Officials in recent weeks have recognized his condition was serious, and the garrulous leader's unusual silence has built up alarm even among supporters.

The constitution says "the elected candidate will assume the Presidency of the Republic on January 10th of the first year of their constitutional term, via swearing-in by the National Assembly."

It says new elections are to be called if the National Assembly determines a "complete absence" of the president because of death, physical or mental impairment or abandoning the job.

The opposition believes it would have a better shot against Chavez's anointed successor, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, than against the charismatic former soldier who for 14 years has been nearly invincible at the ballot box.

Chavez allies want to avoid a public debate over the president's health because his cancer has been treated as a state secret. His treatment in communist Cuba has helped keep his condition under wraps, and the Venezuelan government has given only terse and cryptic statements about his post-operation recovery.

Constitutional lawyer Jose Vicente Haro said he expects the Supreme Court, which is controlled by Chavez allies, will rule that Chavez may extend his existing term without having to be sworn in with the expectation that he will eventually recover.

"What they are doing is taking the debate over succession from the National Assembly, which is where it belongs, and moving it to the Supreme Court where behind closed doors they can decide the next steps are," said Haro, a Chavez critic and constitutional law professor as the Universidad Catholic Andres Bellow.

Chavez has vastly expanded presidential powers and built a near-cult following among millions of poor Venezuelans, who love his feisty language and oil-financed social welfare projects.

Opposition leaders are smarting from this month's governors elections in which Chavez allies won 20 of 23 states. They are trying to keep attention focused on day-to-day problems from rampant crime to power outages.

(This December 22 story has been corrected to change name in paragraphs 12 and 13 to Jose Vicente Haro from Jose Vice Harold)

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Paul Simao)

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South Africa's Mandela to remain in hospital for Christmas

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African President Nelson Mandela continues to respond to treatment more than two weeks after being taken to hospital in Pretoria and will remain there for Christmas Day, the presidency said on Monday.

The 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero and Nobel Peace laureate has been treated for a lung infection and gallstones after being hospitalized on December 8.

President Jacob Zuma said in a statement that Mandela "will recover from this episode with all our support... We also humbly invite all freedom loving people around the world to pray for him."

It will be the first Christmas that Mandela has spent away from home since 1989, when he was still in prison. He was jailed for almost three decades for his role in the struggle against white minority rule.

He was released in 1990 and went on to use his prestige to push for reconciliation between whites and blacks as the bedrock of the post-apartheid "Rainbow Nation".

Mandela was elected South Africa's first black president in 1994. He stepped down five years later after one term in office and has been largely removed from public life for the last decade.

(Reporting and writing by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa and Tom Pfeiffer)

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Yemen tribesmen hold three Westerners for ransom: government

SANAA (Reuters) - A Finnish couple and an Austrian man abducted in Yemen are being held by tribesmen who are demanding a ransom in return for their freedom, an Interior Ministry official said on Monday.

"We have information that a tribal group is holding the three Western nationals and they are asking for a ransom," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. They were kidnapped in the capital Sanaa on Friday.

The ministry official told Reuters the three were being held in the town of Khawlan, about 20 km (12 miles) east of Sanaa.

Kidnappings of Westerners occur sporadically in Yemen, mostly by tribesmen seeking bargaining clout in disputes with the authorities, or by al Qaeda militants and their sympathizers.

Lawlessness in the Arabian Peninsula state has alarmed its neighbor and top world oil exporter Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States which increasingly views Yemen as a front line in its struggle against al Qaeda and its affiliates.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Mahmoud Habboush; Editing by William Maclean and Tom Pfeiffer)

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Egypt reviews ballot on contentious constitution

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian judges were investigating opposition accusations of voting fraud on Monday before declaring the result of a referendum set to show that a contentious new constitution has been approved.

President Mohamed Mursi sees the basic law, drawn up mostly by his Islamist allies, as a vital step in Egypt's transition to democracy almost two years after the fall of military-backed strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Unofficial tallies from the Muslim Brotherhood - which catapulted Mursi into the presidency this year - indicated that 64 percent had approved the charter, although an official result was not expected until at least Tuesday. An opposition tally had a similar result.

Mursi's critics said the vote, conducted in two stages in a process that ended on Saturday, had been marred by a litany of irregularities, and have demanded a full inquiry.

"The committee is currently compiling results from the first and second phase and votes from Egyptians abroad, and is investigating complaints," Judge Mahmoud Abu Shousha, a member of the committee, told Reuters.

Two sources in the committee said the results were likely to be announced on Tuesday. "It will not be very different from the unofficial result, at 60-something percent," one said.

The opposition, a loose alliance of socialists, liberal-minded Muslims and Christians, say the text is too Islamist, ignores the rights of minorities and represents a recipe for more trouble in the most populous Arab nation. They have noted that less than a third of those eligible turned out to vote.

ELECTION LOOMS

If the "yes" vote is confirmed, a parliamentary election will follow in about two months, setting the stage for Islamists to renew their battle with more secular-minded opponents.

Opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace prize winner, urged Mursi to form an all-inclusive government together with the liberal camp in order to patch up divisions and steer Egypt out of trouble in a democratic way.

"I am ready to join hands with President Mursi on condition that he forms a national (unity) government and speaks as president for all Egyptians," he told the daily Al-Shorouk.

ElBaradei, the former head of the U.N. nuclear agency, said a new assembly should rewrite the draft - a call unlikely to be heeded by Mursi, who is keen to push it through quickly.

By forcing the pace on the constitution, Mursi risks squandering the opportunity to build consensus for the austerity measures desperately needed to kick-start an ailing economy, economists say.

Highlighting investor concerns, Standard and Poor's cut Egypt's long-term credit rating and said another cut was possible if political turbulence worsened.

Responding to what it said were market rumors, the central bank said it was taking steps to safeguard bank deposits.

Some Egyptians say they have withdrawn their funds from banks out of concern that they will be frozen by authorities.

LEGISLATIVE POWERS

Under the new constitution, legislative powers that have been temporarily held by Mursi move to the Islamist-dominated upper house of parliament until a new lower house is elected.

The make-up of the Supreme Constitutional Court, which Islamists say is filled with Mubarak-era appointees bent on throwing up legal challenges to Mursi's rule, will also change as its membership is cut to 11 from 18.

Those expected to leave include Tahani al-Gebali, who has described Mursi as an "illegitimate president".

The low turnout has prompted some newspapers to question how much support the charter really had, with opponents saying Mursi lost the vote in much of the capital.

"The referendum battle has ended, and the war over the constitution's legitimacy has begun," Al-Shorouk wrote in a headline, while a headline in the Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper read: "Constitution of the minority".

The head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Saad al-Katatni, wrote on Facebook that the group's members were "extending our hands to all political parties and all national forces", adding: "We will all start a new page".

But the opposition National Salvation Front say the new basic law only deepens a rift between the liberals and Islamists who combined to overthrow Mubarak, and that they will keep challenging it through protests and other democratic means.

"We do not consider this constitution legitimate," liberal politician Amr Hamzawy said on Sunday, arguing that it violated personal freedoms.

The run-up to the referendum was marred by protests triggered by Mursi's decision to award himself broad powers on November 22. At least eight people were killed in clashes in Cairo and violence also flared in the second city, Alexandria.

(Additional reporting by Shaimaa Fayed and Patrick Werr; Writing by Edmund Blair and Maria Golovnina; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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Monti urges debate on Italy election as rivals open fire

ROME (Reuters) - Outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti posted his reform agenda online on Monday, urging Italians to join a debate on their country's future as potentially bitter election campaign gets underway two months before Italy goes to polls.

Following weeks of hesitation, Monti declared his availability on Sunday to lead a reform-minded centrist alliance to seek a second term to complete the economic reform program begun when he took office just over a year ago.

The former European Commissioner, appointed at the head of a technocrat government to save Italy from financial crisis, has now thrown off his mantle of neutrality and entered a race that will be dominated by his tough reform agenda.

Even if he confirms his entry into the campaign, Monti appears unlikely at this stage to return to office but his involvement could strengthen a centrist alliance and help shape the agenda of the next government.

The center-left Democratic Party (PD), which has pledged to maintain Monti's broad reform course while giving more help to workers and pensioners and emphasizing growth more, is favored to win but may have to strike a coalition deal with the center.

In an open letter to Italians posted online and accompanied by a 25-page policy program, Monti said he hoped that the agenda would lead to an "open reflection" that would help shape the debate ahead of the election on February 24-25.

He urged a mix of budget rigor and structural reform as well as measures to crack down on corruption and get more women and young people to work.

However the tone of the campaign has inevitably moved away from calm debate and into the murky and sometimes treacherous territory of Italian party politics, where Monti is a novice.

GLOVES COME OFF

At a news conference on Sunday, he attacked left-wing trade unions for resisting reform but reserved special criticism for his scandal-plagued predecessor Silvio Berlusconi, whom he picked on repeatedly for his "bewildering" changes of position.

Speaking to one of his own television channels, the 76 year-old media billionaire responded by saying it would be "immoral" for Monti to fight the election after governing as an unelected premier with the support of the main parties.

One of Berlusconi's chief lieutenants, Fabrizio Cicchitto, parliamentary floor leader of his People of Freedom (PDL) party, indicated that Monti's international standing and the respect he enjoys among Italy's European partners would count for little.

"He's taken aim at the PDL, which obviously has no choice but to respond in kind," he said.

Monti, a Life Senator who does not need to stand for election to parliament, has not said exactly what forces he could support but the centrist parties he has been linked with greeted his announcement with great enthusiasm.

"We're not forcing Monti but obviously if it happens, the value it adds to our project will be enormous," Pierferdinando Casini, head of the centrist UDC party, which is close to the Catholic church, told the daily La Repubblica.

A small number of centrists from both the two main parties, including former Foreign Minister Franco Frattini announced they were leaving their parties and would support Monti, whose reform agenda is strongly backed by Italy's business establishment.

However the centrist group lags both the center-left Democratic Party (PD) and the PDL as well as the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement in opinion polls and without Monti, it has little chance of making any significant gains.

Even with the respected economics professor at its head, a centrist alliance including the UDC and other smaller parties including a new group created by Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, appears likely to struggle to pass 15 percent.

(Reporting By James Mackenzie; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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Ghana opposition contender might challenge election results

ACCRA (Reuters) - Ghana's main opposition challenger said on Monday his party might challenge election results in the courts after authorities declared incumbent president John Dramani Mahama winner of the December 7 poll.

Ghana's electoral commission said on Sunday Mahama, who replaced former president John Atta Mills after his death in July, had won 50.7 percent of the ballots cast, enough to avoid a run-off against rival Nana Akufo-Addo.

"We have serious reservations about the counting and the declaration of results," Akufo-Addo told Reuters in his office at his residence in Accra.

"If we are going to challenge the results, the main question is; do we have enough evidence to suggest that, materially, the evidence will have affected the outcome?"

"We are not in a position to embrace these results. The obvious option is to go and challenge the results in the courts. The other option is to forego it and make your case to the country," Akufo-Addo said.

The poll is seen as a test of whether Ghana can maintain more than 30 years of stability and progress in a region better known for coups, civil wars and corruption.

A cliff-hanger election in 2008, in which Akufo-Addo lost by less than 1 percent, pushed the country to the brink of chaos, with disputes over results driving hundreds of people into the streets with clubs and machetes.

Akufo-Addo called for calm, saying leaders of his conservative-leaning New Patriotic Party would meet on Tuesday to decide the party's response to the results.

On the wall of his office is a portrait of his father Edward Akufo-Addo, president from August 1970 to January 1972 before he was deposed by a military coup. Outside, there was a dour atmosphere among supporters milling about the yard, some yelling that the election had been stolen.

Voting was fraught with delays after hundreds of newly-introduced electronic fingerprint readers failed on Friday and forced some polling stations to reopen on Saturday to clear the backlog.

But the west African nation's non-partisan Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), which deployed more than 4,000 poll watchers, said the vote had been generally free and fair.

CODEO said on Monday its parallel tabulation of results confirmed those declared by the electoral commission.

"The results of the 2012 presidential polls declared by the Electoral Commission are generally an accurate reflection of how Ghanaians voted in the December 7 polls," it said in a statement.

The cocoa and gold-producing nation, which also began pumping oil in 2010, has had five peaceful and constitutional transfers of power since its last coup in 1981.

(Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo and Richard Valdmanis; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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Berlusconi sex trial flares up as Italy election nears

MILAN (Reuters) - Milan magistrates ordered police on Monday to search for a Moroccan nightclub dancer at the center of a sex trial involving Silvio Berlusconi, now seeking a fifth term as prime minister in an election next year, after she failed to show up in court.

The incident, two days after Berlusconi announced he was planning to run in an election expected in February, came as a reminder of the sex scandals that plagued his last government and precipitated his demise.

Karima El Mahroug, better known by her stage name of "Ruby the Heartstealer", was due to testify on Monday but did not provide any valid justification for her absence, prosecutor Ilda Boccassini said in court.

El Mahroug's lawyer said she did not know where her client was.

Boccassini accused Berlusconi's lawyers of deliberately delaying the trial, where the former premier is accused of paying for sex with El Mahroug when she was under 18, to avoid a verdict in the middle of the election campaign.

Eighteen is the legal age limit for prostitution in Italy.

"This is a strategy to delay the proceedings while the election campaign gets under way," Boccassini said in court.

NATIONWIDE SEARCH

Berlusconi's lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, in turn said the prosecutors were trying to hasten a verdict before the election, now expected in February rather than March or April after Prime Minister Mario Monti said at the weekend he would resign early.

"It is the magistrates who have started the election campaign," he told reporters outside the court.

The presiding judge in the case ordered police to search for El Mahroug "throughout the national territory" and the trial was adjourned to December 17. However, El Mahroug's lawyer, Paola Boccardi, said she did not know whether Ruby would show up then.

"I tried reaching her but her cellphone is off. She sent me a text saying she was abroad but I have no information about this trip and I don't know when she will be back," she said.

El Mahroug's testimony in court has been requested by Berlusconi's defense team. Italian media said a few days before Monday's hearing that Ruby had suddenly decided to travel to the United States.

A verdict, which could deal a blow to Berlusconi's comeback hopes were he to be found guilty, is expected early next year.

The trial, in which dozens of aspiring showgirls have described the so-called "Bunga Bunga" parties at Berlusconi's residences, is the most sensational of Berlusconi's legal cases and has been getting huge media attention in Italy and abroad.

Berlusconi is also accused of abusing his powers when he was still prime minister to have El Mahroug released from police custody when she was briefly held over theft allegations.

Berlusconi has denied any wrongdoing in the case, accusing left-wing magistrates of waging a politically motivated campaign against him.

The 76-year-old billionaire, whose sex scandal precipitated his political demise just over a year ago, said last week he would seek re-election after his party abruptly withdrew support from Monti's government.

(additional reporting by Sara Rossi; Writing by Antonella Ciancio; Editing by Silvia Aloisi and Sophie Hares)

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Chavez faces surgery in Cuba, vows "I'll be back"

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's ailing President Hugo Chavez flew to Cuba early on Monday for cancer surgery, vowing to return quickly despite his unprecedented admission the disease could curb his 14-year rule of the South American OPEC nation.

"I leave full of hope. We are warriors, full of light and faith," the ever-upbeat Chavez said before boarding the flight to Havana. "I hope to be back soon."

Chavez pumped a fist in the air as he set off for the latest chapter of a tumultuous rule that has seen a brief coup against him, waves of nationalizations, a crippling oil strike and heightened acrimony with the United States.

The 58-year-old socialist leader is facing his fourth operation since mid-2011 for a third bout of an undisclosed form of cancer in the pelvic area. That news sparked a rally in Venezuela dollar bonds on Monday, given many investors' preference for more a business-friendly government in Caracas.

Chavez stunned Venezuelans over the weekend with his announcement that more malignant cells had been found, despite twice declaring himself completely cured in the past.

He won a re-election in October and is due to start a new six-year term on January 10. Chavez's departure from office, either before or after that date, would trigger a vote within 30 days.

It would also mark the end of an era given his flamboyant leadership of Latin America's hard left and self-appointed role as Washington's main provocateur in the region.

In a speech to the nation on Saturday night, Chavez named Vice President and Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro to take over should he become incapacitated. He also urged supporters to vote for Maduro in the event of an election.

"I trust completely in my soldiers," Chavez said, dressed in a blue-and-white track suit, during the swearing-in of a new defense minister before his departure. "The republic and the revolution are in good hands."

The naming of Maduro and swearing-in of a new defense minister appeared to be Chavez's way of trying to leave the house in good order. Ministers were once again trying to keep Venezuelans calm despite frenzied speculation.

"We are still working the same, following the instructions of the president who remains the president of the republic," Finance Minister Jorge Giordani told Reuters.

But the health saga has once again eclipsed major national issues such as state elections on Sunday, a widely respected devaluation of the bolivar currency, and a proposed amnesty for Chavez's jailed and exiled political foes.

OPPOSITION CRITICISM

Opposition leaders say Venezuela is entering potentially dangerous waters and a temporary president should be named during Chavez's absence, as allowed by the constitution.

According to the constitution, Congress head Diosdado Cabello - widely considered a rival of Maduro's despite their public protestations to the contrary - would step in temporarily should Chavez be incapacitated before the January 10 date.

Maduro would assume the job should Chavez be incapacitated after that date.

Chavez pointedly called for unity and "no intrigue" before leaving.

While sympathizing with Chavez and wishing him good health, the opposition has criticized the secrecy around medical details and his snubbing of local doctors in favor of Cuba.

"Hiding information for partial gain, without taking into account the national interest, is not a democratic procedure, it does not give good results," said Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, the leader of Venezuela's Democratic Unity coalition.

Chavez left in the early hours and Cuban state TV later showed images of his arrival in Havana.

"Onward to victory forever, onward to life forever! Long live the fatherland!" an emotional Chavez boomed to supporters on the runway as he walked up to the plane.

Venezuela's global bonds, among the most traded hard-currency emerging market papers, are volatile on Chavez's health, with downturns generally driving up prices.

On Monday, Venezuelan bonds rallied 2.18 percent in price, according to returns tallied by the J.P. Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus (EMBI+).

Chavez's health also has major implications for the region. A handful of Latin American and Caribbean neighbors - from Cuba and Nicaragua to Bolivia and Ecuador - have come to depend on his oil-fueled largesse to bolster their fragile economies.

Many analysts believe that despite Chavez's anointment of Maduro, his "Chavismo" movement could disintegrate without him, especially given rumored rivalries among the main players.

"We remain of the view there could very well be no Chavismo without Chavez," Goldman Sachs analyst Alberto Ramos said, warning in a research note of "a possibly noisy, and not necessarily short, political transition in Venezuela."

Among the senior "Chavistas," Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver and union leader, is widely viewed as the most popular, thanks to his affable manner and close ties to Chavez.

While his humble background appeals to the Chavez's working class supporters, Maduro's six years as foreign minister have also given him good contacts in China, Russia and other influential nations. He has an easygoing style but is a firm believer in Chavez's leftist policies and has often led fierce criticism of the United States.

If a new election were needed, the opposition could be in its best position to win since Chavez took power in 1999. Many voters have overlooked the government's failings because of their deep emotional connection with the president.

Henrique Capriles, a state governor, lost to Chavez in the October, but he received 44 percent of ballots cast, a record 6.5 million votes for the opposition, and could run again.

Supporters have been holding vigils for Chavez round the nation, and even though he was absent on Monday, his image was everywhere on state media and in public squares.

Messages of support also have poured in from abroad, the latest on Monday from a former foe-turned-friend, Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos.

"Our solidarity with President Chavez in these difficult moments. We pray for a speedy recovery," he tweeted.

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas, Walker Simon in New York, Sujata Rao in London, Nelson Acosta in Havana, Jack Kimball in Havana)

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Yemen says 17 soldiers killed in ambush

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni military planes on Monday struck at al Qaeda insurgents suspected of carrying out an ambush in which 17 army officers and soldiers were killed, tribal sources said.

The ambush, which took place on Saturday while an army patrol inspected a pipeline in Wadi Obaida area of oil-producing Maarib province, was one of the deadliest attacks by al Qaeda in recent months.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi attended the funeral ceremony on Monday for the dead servicemen, who included Major-General Nasser Mahdi Farid, chief of staff for Yemen's central military region, state news agency Saba said.

Government warplanes bombed the gunmen suspected of being behind the attack, tribal sources said. The air strikes started on Sunday and killed four people but it was not immediately clear if the victims were al Qaeda fighters or not.

Repairs have begun on the Maarib oil pipeline and power lines last week after the government reached a deal with tribesmen to stop attacking infrastructure.

Yemen has struggled to restore normality since Hadi took office in February following a year of protests that forced Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after 33 years in power.

Yemen's stability is a priority for the United States and its Gulf allies because of Yemen's strategic position next to oil exporter Saudi Arabia and shipping lanes, and because it is home to a wing of al Qaeda.

The Yemeni-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has mounted operations in Saudi Arabia and attempted attacks against the United States, which has stepped up strikes by drones.

The U.S.-backed military offensive has driven the militants out of areas they seized in the south last year but has not prevented them from launching attacks that have dealt damaging blows to the army and security apparatus.

In June, the commander of military forces in the south of Yemen was killed by a suicide bomber in the port city of Aden.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Egypt army gets temporary power to arrest civilians

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's government has temporarily given the military the authority to arrest civilians to help safeguard a constitutional referendum planned for Saturday, the official gazette said.

The order, gazetted late on Sunday, said the military would support police and liaise with them to protect "vital institutions" until the referendum result is declared.

The decree gave army officers the right to make arrests and transfer detainees to prosecutors.

Despite its limited nature, the edict will revive memories of Hosni Mubarak's emergency law, also introduced as a temporary expedient, under which military or state security courts tried thousands of political dissidents and Islamist militants.

But a military source stressed that the measure, introduced by a civilian government, would have a short shelf-life.

"The latest law giving the armed forces the right to arrest anyone involved in illegal actions such as burning buildings or damaging public sites is to ensure security during the referendum only," the military source said.

"The armed forces secured polling stations during previous elections when it was in charge of the country," the source said, referring to 16 months of army rule after Mubarak fell.

"Now the president is in charge. In order for the armed forces to be involved in securing the referendum, a law had to be issued saying so," the source added.

Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali said the committee overseeing the vote had requested the army's assistance.

"The armed forces will work within a legal framework to secure the referendum and will return (to barracks) as soon as the referendum is over," Ali said.

On Saturday, the military urged rival political forces to solve their disputes via dialogue and said the opposite would drag the country into a "dark tunnel", which it would not allow.

A statement issued by the military spokesman and read on state radio and television made no mention of President Mohamed Mursi, but said a solution to the political crisis should not contradict "legitimacy and the rules of democracy".

A military source close to top officers said the statement "does not indicate any future intervention in politics".

A military council took over after a popular revolt ended Mubarak's 30 years of army-backed rule last year. It then handed power to Mursi, who became Egypt's first freely elected leader in June. The military has not intervened in the latest crisis.

The army statement said the military's duty was to protect national interests and secure vital state institutions.

"The armed forces affirm that dialogue is the best and only way to reach consensus," it added. "The opposite of that will bring us to a dark tunnel that will result in catastrophe and that is something we will not allow."

Hassan Abu Taleb of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies said Saturday's army statement suggested the military wanted both sides to talk out their differences, but discounted the chance of direct military intervention.

"They realize that interfering again in a situation of civil combat will squeeze them between two rocks," he said.

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh; Writing by Alistair Lyon; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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Germany expels four Syrian embassy staff

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany has expelled four Syrian embassy staff as part of a drive to reduce ties with President Bashar al-Assad, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Monday.

Berlin has told Syria's acting envoy that the four staff have until Thursday to leave Germany.

"With the expulsion of the four embassy employees announced today we are sending a clear message that we are reducing relations with the Assad regime to an absolute minimum," Westerwelle said in a statement.

"We are counting on the (opposition) National Coalition strengthening further and building as soon as possible functioning institutions for a political transition," he added.

France and Britain last month recognized the National Coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people, though some EU countries including Germany have trodden more cautiously. Western governments are concerned about the presence of hardline Islamists in the opposition ranks.

Germany expelled the Syrian ambassador in May after a massacre widely blamed on forces loyal to Assad.

Last week, the German parliament approved the sending of Patriot missiles to NATO ally Turkey to defend it against possible Syrian missile attacks.

Syria's civil war grew out of peaceful, Arab Spring-inspired mass protests against Assad in March last year.

(Reporting by Gareth Jones; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Mandela faces more tests in hospital

PRETORIA (Reuters) - Nelson Mandela, the 94-year-old former South African president and revered anti-apartheid leader, is to undergo more tests in hospital on Monday after having a good rest on his second night in the facility, the government said.

A statement from the office of President Jacob Zuma, who visited the Nobel Peace laureate on Sunday, gave no details other than to say, "President Mandela had a good night's rest" and was "in good hands". It also thanked members of the public for their messages of support.

Defense Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told reporters after paying Mandela a visit in Pretoria's "1 Military" hospital that he was doing "very, very well". The military is responsible for the health of sitting and former South African presidents.

Mandela, South Africa's first black president and a global symbol of resistance to racism and injustice, spent 27 years in apartheid prisons, including 18 years on the windswept Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town.

He was released in 1990 and went on to be elected president in the historic all-race elections in 1994 that ended white-minority rule in Africa's most important economy.

He used his unparalleled prestige to push for reconciliation between whites and blacks, setting up a commission to probe crimes committed by both sides in the anti-apartheid struggle.

Mandela's African National Congress has continued to govern since his retirement from politics in 1999, but has been criticized for perceived corruption and slowness in addressing apartheid-era inequalities in housing, education and healthcare.

When Mandela was admitted on Saturday, officials stressed there was no cause for concern although domestic media reports suggested senior members of the government and people close to him had been caught unawares.

The City Press newspaper said both the Nelson Mandela Foundation and his ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, had not known about his transfer to the capital from his home in the remote village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape province.

"I wish Mr Mandela a quick recovery from his sickness so we can be with him all the time. He was a good president, a good leader, so he must be with us," said John Sekiti, a petrol station attendant in Pretoria.

Mandela remains a hero to many of South Africa's 52 million people and two brief stretches in hospital in the last two years made front page news.

He spent time in a Johannesburg hospital in 2011 with a respiratory condition, and again in February this year because of abdominal pains. He was released the following day after a keyhole examination showed there was nothing serious.

He has since spent most of his time in Qunu.

His fragile health prevents him from making any public appearances in South Africa, although he has continued to receive high-profile domestic and international visitors, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton in July.

(Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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