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Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has threatened to dissolve parliament and call elections after the collapse of the country's ruling coalition.



Mr Yushchenko's supporters walked out in protest following new laws trimming the president's powers.

The laws were introduced by the pro-Russian opposition and backed by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's party.

Former allies, the prime minister and president are now at odds despite sharing pro-Western political goals.

All but one of 12 ministers from Mr Yushchenko's party boycotted Wednesday's cabinet meeting.

"A political and constitutional coup d'etat has started in the parliament," Mr Yushchenko said in a televised speech.

"I will use my right to dissolve parliament and decree early elections if a new coalition is not formed within 30 days," he said.

'Irresponsible behaviour'

But Ms Tymoshenko blamed her rival for the chaos, vowing that the Ukrainian cabinet would continue its work despite the break-up of the coalition.

"I am sorry that the president behaves irresponsibly," she said at a cabinet meeting. "The coalition was destroyed under his instruction."

The BBC's Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke says Mr Yushchenko's popularity is at rock bottom at the moment with opinion polls giving him single-digit levels of support.

The prime minister and president are believed to be jockeying for position before next year's presidential election, though our correspondent says Mr Yushchenko's chances of winning with current popularity levels would be slim.

The crisis follows mounting tension between the president and prime minister with Mr Yushchenko accusing Ms Tymoshenko of treason for allegedly siding with Moscow over the conflict in Georgia.

Mr Yushchenko has been a vociferous supporter of Georgia during the conflict but the prime minister's party on Tuesday blocked a parliamentary resolution condemning Moscow.

The flare-up comes a day before a planned visit to the country by US Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The trip is part of a tour of former Soviet states which the US sees as key allies.

BBC News

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North Korea has begun reassembling a nuclear plant, reversing steps taken under an international deal to end its nuclear programme, South Korea says.



South Korea's foreign ministry said the countries involved in the six-party nuclear negotiations were working closely to determine their response.

Pyongyang warned last month that it had stopped disabling the Yongbyon plant.

It accused the US of breaking an agreement to remove it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

The removal from the list was part of the package promised to North Korea but it has not yet been carried out.

US scepticism

Although the disabling process is well advanced, it is reversible. Experts believe the North's facilities could be back up and running within a year.

Former UN weapons inspector David Albright says the reactor at Yongbyon is mostly intact.

But he said the regime would need to manufacture hundreds - possibly thousands - of fuel rods and rebuild a cooling tower that was blown up in June to get it fully operational.

He believes the North is unlikely to rebuild the plant, but is instead using the threat as a bargaining chip to gain more concessions from the six-party talks, which involve North and South Korea, the US, China, Russia and Japan.

The US state department also expressed scepticism over the latest claims from Pyongyang.

Department official Paula DeSutter told reporters that the North Koreans "like to posture".

In June, North Korea finally submitted a long-delayed account of its nuclear facilities - and was expecting to be removed from the US list almost immediately in return.

But the US said that would not be possible until North Korea agreed to inspections aimed at verifying the details that it had disclosed.

That move has been delayed amid wrangling among the six parties over exactly how these details can be verified.

The North began disabling the Yongbyon plant in November but stopped in late August in protest at the delay.

Seoul confirmed reports earlier on Wednesday from Japan's public broadcaster NHK and Kyodo news agency that the North had started reassembling the facilities.

BBC News

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Rival leaders of the divided island of Cyprus are meeting to launch negotiations aimed at reunifying the island after 34 years of division.



Cyprus President Demetris Christofias and rival Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat met at a compound in Nicosia.

Analysts say the talks have a real chance of resolving the dispute, which threatens Turkey's EU membership hopes.

The island has been divided since a Turkish invasion in 1974, triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup in Nicosia.

Turkey has 35,000 troops in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.

'Historic day'

"We must, at long last, put an end to the suffering of our people and reunite our country," Mr Christofias told reporters as he headed for the meeting, held in an abandoned airport compound on the outskirts of the divided capital.

Mr Talat said their aim was to make "a divided island a common place where two nations are living".

"Ankara is, you know, supporting a solution. That is why after four years of stalemate we are here - we are in favour of a solution. We are confident that we will succeed in concluding [a] comprehensive agreement," he said.

Mr Christofias added: "There is a common will and a common desire and a common effort to achieve this target".

The last attempt at a negotiated solution - in 2004 - collapsed when Turkish Cypriots voted in favour of a UN settlement plan which was rejected by Greek Cypriot voters.

As a result, Cyprus joined the European Union that year as a divided island with Turkish Cypriots denied the bloc's membership benefits.

Challenges ahead

The UN secretary general's special envoy to the talks, former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, said "significant progress" had been made to create a solid foundation for negotiations.

Mr Christofias and Mr Talat - both seen as moderates - have met five times so far this year.

They will continue to meet at least once a week, though the UN has warned that talks should not continue indefinitely without concrete progress being made.

Mr Downer said of the process: "There have been difficult moments over the past months and there will likely be further difficulties and challenges ahead.

"At the same time, the Cyprus problem is not insurmountable and the negotiations which begin today can and must have a successful outcome."

The meeting is scheduled to address matters of procedure, with negotiations on more substantive - and difficult - issues due to begin on 11 September.

BBC News

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US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said the US wants to work with Azerbaijan on additional routes for exporting the region's oil reserves to the West.



He also pledged support for US allies in the former Soviet Union.

A BBC correspondent says the US sees the states as key allies in protecting access to the region's energy supplies.

Mr Cheney - who will also visit Georgia and Ukraine - spoke as US officials revealed President Bush was to announce a $1bn (£0.5bn) aid package to Georgia.

Flanked by Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, Mr Cheney said: "We've met this evening in the shadow of the recent Russian invasion of Georgia."

He said he was bringing "a clear and simple message for the people of Azerbaijan and the entire region: the United States has a deep and abiding interest in your well-being and security".

But the BBC's Steve Rosenberg, in Moscow, says America's primary concern is not nurturing democracy in the region but rather oil and gas.

Washington wants to benefit from huge energy deposits in the Caspian Sea, but it does not want all the pipelines heading west through Russia.

One Western-sponsored pipeline is already pumping Caspian oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

There are plans for another pipeline to take natural gas from Azerbaijan and Central Asia and transporting it from Turkey to Austria.

Our correspondent says that, as far as the US and the EU are concerned, the new pipeline is vital if the West is to avoid becoming too energy dependent on Moscow.

Pledge of support

Mr Cheney's trip is likely to infuriate Moscow, which sees Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia as part of its sphere of influence.

In Georgia, Mr Cheney is expected to stress US support for President Mikhail Saakashvili - the man the Kremlin dismissed on Tuesday as a "political corpse" whose leadership it did not recognise.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev has also accused the US of helping Tbilisi build its war machine and called on America to review its relations with the Georgian authorities.

"Unfortunately, at a certain point [the US] gave Saakashvili carte blanche for any actions, including military. All that was translated into aggression," Mr Medvedev told Italian television.

Fighting between Russia and Georgia began on 7 August after the Georgian military tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force.

Russian forces launched a counter-attack and the conflict ended with the ejection of Georgian troops from South Ossetia and Georgia's other separatist region of Abkhazia.

Russia has since recognised the independence of both regions, though no other country has.

BBC News

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy has arrived in Syria's capital Damascus on a visit that is part of efforts to improve ties between the two countries.



He described his trip as a "message of friendship" to the Syrians, according to Syria's al-Watan newspaper.

Relations between Paris and Damascus plummeted after the murder of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in 2005.

Syria's critics accuse Damascus of being behind the assassination, a charge Syria has firmly denied.

Mr Sarkozy's two-day visit to Syria - a former French colony - is the first by a Western head of state in five years.

He hosted Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in July and he appears determined to bring Syria, a long-time foe of the US and Israel, back into the international fold, correspondents say.

During the Paris summit, Syria and Lebanon, an important ally of France, agreed to open embassies in each other's capitals for the first since the 1940s.

Mideast summit

"Syria can provide an irreplaceable contribution to solving Middle East issues," Mr Sarkozy told al-Watan in an interview, the AFP news agency reports.

"It is important that Syria plays a positive role in the region," the French president said, adding that peace in the Middle East "passes through" Syria and France.

Mr Sarkozy is due to meet President Assad at a dinner on Wednesday evening.

On Thursday, the two presidents will be joined by top officials from Turkey and Qatar for talks on Lebanon and Syria's indirect peace talks with Israel. Ankara has been mediating for several months in the Israeli-Syrian talks, while Qatar brokered a deal in May to resolve Lebanon's prolonged political crisis.

BBC News

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China has admitted that there could have been construction problems with some of the schools that collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake.



The admission follows an investigation into the building standards of schools and other structures that fell down.

Thousands of pupils were among nearly 90,000 people who died or are still missing following the quake in May.

Parents have demanded to know why so many schools collapsed, and want those responsible to be punished.

'Not necessarily reasonable'

Independent engineers and some local officials have previously said that they believe many of the schools that collapsed did so because they were badly built.

But Ma Zongjin's comments, made at a press conference on Thursday, are important because he is the chairman of the national committee set up by the government to investigate the earthquake.

In response to a question about the schools, he said: "The structures were not necessarily reasonable and the materials were not necessarily strong enough. Both are possibilities."

But he said some schools would have collapsed anyway because of the strength of the magnitude 8 earthquake that hit northern Sichuan Province.

"There were some buildings in the earthquake fault zone that were not able to resist the earthquake," he said.

"So it didn't matter whether it was a building for children, a school, a government building or a residential block. They were all destroyed."

Parents' anger

But schools did seem to collapse more easily than other buildings during the earthquake, which also left 5 million people homeless.

Some schools, such as Dujiangyan's Xinjian Primary School, were the only buildings to fall down in some areas.

From the very beginning, the parents of those children who died have wanted to know why schools appeared to collapse to such an extent.

Government officials promised an investigation while, at the same time, pressurising parents to keep their grief - and their anger - to themselves.

Mr Ma seemed to confirm parents' worst fears when he said that bad design and poor quality materials might have played a role in the schools' collapse.

"There were possibly some construction problems because we have built schools relatively quickly in recent times," he said.

The investigation is continuing, but Mr Ma seemed to downplay expectations that the probe would lead to those responsible being punished.

He said the aim of the investigation was to make sure new schools were built properly.

BBC News

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BP has signed an agreement aimed at solving a festering dispute over control of its Russian venture TNK-BP.



The boss of TNK-BP, Robert Dudley, will step down as part of the deal with the Russian billionaires that control half of the business.

Three independent directors will also be appointed to TNK-BP's board.

Mr Dudley's departure had been central to the power struggle between BP and the Russian investors in the venture, which accounts for 25% of BP's profits.

The memorandum of understanding, signed on Thursday, also includes the option to list up to 20% of the venture on international markets.

TNK-BP's Russian partners had long called for Mr Dudley's departure and Mr Dudley left Russia in July in the face of what he said was "sustained harassment".

BP said it had agreed to offer a Russian-speaking candidate for the post, with extensive Russian business experience.

The Russian shareholders had accused BP of running TNK-BP like a subsidiary and Mr Dudley of favouring the British shareholder.

BP chairman Peter Sutherland said that the agreement, to be finalised over coming months, would relieve recent tensions between the two sides.

"It will create a stable base from which to grow the joint venture to the benefit of everyone involved, including the Russian state," Mr Sutherland said

He said that Mr Dudley had been an outstanding chief executive and would be hard to replace.

'Positive signal'

BP owns 50% of the venture while the Russian shareholding is made up of a number of Russian billionaires who control a consortium known as Alfa Access Renova (AAR).

Russia welcomed the compromise between AAR and BP.

"We are pleased that this situation has been resolved and the shareholders have come to an agreement without the involvement of third parties, including the state," said Igor Sechin, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.

"This is a positive signal for the Russian market. We support the development of TNK-BP and believe that this company has excellent long-term prospects."

Viktor Vekselberg, chairman of Renova, said the agreement was the result of difficult negotiations.

"Most importantly, emotions were not allowed to prevail over common sense and both sides found the solution that best meets the interests of TNK-BP," he said.

BBC News

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Seven people were killed when a helicopter crashed into an oil rig off the coast of Dubai, officials say.



The victims were a Briton, an American, a Filipino, a Venezuelan, a Pakistani and two Indian nationals, the country's Civil Aviation Authority said.

The helicopter crashed into the deck of the rig during take-off, Petrofac, the operator of Dubai government's offshore oilfields, said in a statement.

An investigation is under way into the cause of the crash.

The incident happened on at 2020 (1720 GMT) on Wednesday.

The Aerogulf Bell 212 helicopter, carrying two crew members and five passengers, was on a routine flight from the Rashid oil field, 70 kilometres (43.5 miles) from Dubai, Aberdeen-based company Petrofac said.

"During take-off the helicopter crashed onto the deck of the Resilient, the Maersk jack-up drilling rig," it said.

"The aircraft then broke up and fell into the sea."

The helicopter accident happened off the coast of Dubai

The company added: "Immediately following the incident, a fire broke out on the main deck of the drilling rig which was quickly contained and extinguished."

The company said there were no survivors on board.

There were no additional casualties on either the drilling rig or the platform.

All operations on the Rashid field have been suspended and the platform and drilling rig have been secured, Petrofac said.

The company confirmed that the victims were foreign contractors and said that their relatives were being informed.

BBC News

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