MOSCOW, Sept. 24--Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of international media executives on Friday that Russia does not aim to nationalize the embattled oil giant Yukos, AFP reported.
"The state's goal has not been, is not and will not be" to take over Yukos for the state, he said in response to a question on the government's intentions towards Russia's number one oil producer.
"Russian state firms could participate in the auction of assets of embattled oil giant Yukos", Putin said. "If in the future, assets of this company are put on sale, state firms could participate in this," he added.
Earlier, The board of troubled Russian oil giant Yukos told the company's management Thursday to do everything within its power to avoid bankruptcy, the board's chairman Viktor Gerashchenko said.
"We are acting from a conviction that our President (Vladimir Putin) does not engage in idle talk, and that his statement that it is not in the state's interest to see Yukos bankrupt authorizes us not to declare bankruptcy," Gerashchenko said as quoted by the Interfax news agency.
The board "decided that the management should act in the way that is proper, do all it can to enable the company to survive, meet contractual obligations and pay taxes," the chairman added.
Yukos' board met Friday to discuss the company's future, which has grown increasingly gloomy since it found itself in the sights of the Russian authorities.
Yukos, whose imprisoned chief shareholder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is on trial for fraud and tax evasion, is locked in a desperate fight for survival with the Kremlin in what observers say is in revenge for the political ambitions of Russia's richest man.
Tax authorities have already demanded more $7.5 billion (6.1 billion euros) in back taxes for 2000 and 2001 and the final bill could be significantly in excess of $10 billion.
Court bailiffs enforcing the tax demands have announced they will auction the main Yukos production subsidiary, Yuganskneftegaz, which accounts for 60 percent of Yukos's oil output.
Yukos, the largest Russian oil exporter which pumps one in five of every barrel of oil in Russia, has paid off more than $2 billion of the 2000 tax bill thanks to soaring world crude prices but is in a losing race against time.

AMMAN, Jordan, Sept. 24--Energy ministers from four Arab countries will meet with EU officials over the weekend to discuss ways of increasing gas exports to Europe, European Commission Vice President Loyola de Palacio said Thursday, AFP reported.
Saturday's talks in Cairo between the EU officials and ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will center on the Arab gas pipeline, begun in 2002.
The pipeline is currently used to export Egyptian gas to the other three Arab nations, but is expected to be expanded to reach Cyprus, Turkey and eventually some European countries.
De Palacio told reporters here that Europe needed to diversify its energy supplies and build shared interests with Arab and Mediterranean countries, many of which have association agreements with Europe.
The Arab gas integration project is partly-funded by the European Investment Bank, and the scheme is of interest to the European Union because of rising European gas consumption, she said.
"The European Union depends on third countries for more than 50 percent of our energy needs and the tendency is that this dependency shall grow," she said, stressing the need for security and diversity of supply.
Europe buys 40 percent of its gas supplies from Russia, with the rest coming mainly from Norway and Algeria, the commissioner said, adding that Europe recently began importing gas from Egypt.
De Palacio said her talks in Jordan and Egypt will also cover alternative ways of getting gas from the region to Europe, "to better guarantee the security of supplies".

MONTREAL, Canada, Sept. 24--International civil air traffic, which suffered two years of stagnation following the September 11, 2001 attacks, is expected to show a strong rebound this year through 2006, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) said Thursday, AFP reported.
After the post-attack depression, exacerbated by a world economic slump, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic that killed 800 and infected some 8,000 worldwide, and the war in Iraq, 2004 bodes well for the start of a recovery, said the ICAO.
"Worldwide airline passenger traffic is expected to rebound in 2004," it said, adding the expected increase for 2004 is 6.2 percent, 5.4 percent in 2005, and 5.2 percent in 2006.
By region, in 2004 European carriers should see a 5.1 percent increase and North American carriers a 5.6 percent increase.
The Middle East should see a traffic increase of 6.7 percent in 2004, and 6.9 percent in 2005 and 2006.
Latin America and the Caribbean should see traffic increases of 4.5 percent in 2004 and 4.2 percent in 2005 and 2006.
African carriers should see an increase of 4 percent in 2004, 5 percent in 2005 and 4.3 percent in 2006, said the IACO.

BERLIN, Sept. 24--Germany's finance ministry distanced itself on Friday from a report it would back a proposal to tax arms sales to raise funds for poor countries at a meeting next week of rich nation finance ministers, Reuters reported.
Handelsblatt newspaper reported Finance Minister Hans Eichel would support the idea at the meeting of G7 finance ministers due to meet on Oct. 1-2 alongside the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.
More than 100 nations signed a declaration this week proposing ways to raise funds to combat global poverty.
As well as a tax on trade in weapons, the ideas included a global tax on financial transactions, an international borrowing facility and a scheme for marketing credit cards whose users would donate a small percentage of their charges to the cause.
A finance ministry spokesman said Eichel had sympathy for some of the proposals but was not actively supporting them. "We unanimously agree in the government on the need to think about innovative financing possibilities to fight global
poverty," the spokesman said. "But we also agree that all the proposals that have been made so far would be problematic to agree and to implement."
Handelsblatt quoted Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul as saying a tax would not help reduce arms exports.
"I don't have any illusions. It will hardly be possible to reach an agreement soon on any of the proposals," she said.
The declaration signed by 110 nations was made this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Legal exports of alluvial or surface diamonds have topped $99 million so far in 2004.

FREETOWN,
Sierra Leone,
Sept. 24--Sierra Leone's revived diamond industry is expected to export $120 million worth of the precious gems this year, officials said on Thursday, boosting revenues for the war-torn west African state.
Hindolo Myers, the head of the goverment's Gold and Diamond Office, said that legal exports of mostly alluvial or surface diamonds have topped $99 million so far in 2004, compared to just $50 million a year earlier.
Kimberlite mining, which requires blasting and boring into deep, dense rock columns, has been responsible for roughly $8 million in exports this year.
Control over the lucrative diamond trade was among the reasons Sierra Leone plunged into a decade of conflict, among the most savage in modern history.
At the height of the rebel war that raged until 2001, the Revolutionary United Front was smuggling hundreds of millions of dollars in "blood diamonds" through channels that included next-door Liberia, Lebanon and Israel, documents from the United Nations have shown.
A new global certification scheme known as the Kimberley Process has tightened restrictions on the diamond trade, making it clear to purchasers whether the stones have been legally or illegally mined and traded.
It is thanks to the Kimberley Process, Myers told AFP, that Sierra Leone is having such success this year.
"It has injected fear in the hearts of smugglers who collaborate on the other side of the world and make it easier for us to move our exports," he said.
Myers acknowledged that the presence of UN peacekeepers in Sierra Leone was also serving as a deterrent to smugglers but expressed confidence that once the troops were completely withdrawn--slated for June of next year--the local military and police would step in to fill the vacuum.
"Our army has been revitalized with new innovations to assure our own security," he said. "We will be comfortable doing all of the law enforcement ourselves."

LONDON, Sept. 24--The Iraq war and security fears have overshadowed the desperate need to tackle poverty and suffering in Africa, World Bank president James Wolfensohn said in a newspaper interview published on Friday, Reuters reported.
"It is hard to get people to focus on these issues when the world is spending $900 billion on defense," he was quoted as saying in the Financial Times.
He said next month's annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were likely to be dominated by Iraq and terrorism.
"What is important is to make people conscious of the fact that the short-term preoccupation with Iraq, Afghanistan and terrorism have to be met," Wolfensohn said.
"But we can't lose any time on the medium and long-term issues of poverty and development."
He cited genocide in Sudan's Darfur region, AIDS and the need to build government capacity as examples of the urgent need for action in Africa.
"We have in Africa a scale of bloodshed and terror which is a huge multiple of anything we see in other places," he said.
"We have to wake up to this so we do not fall into the trap of thinking that black lives do not mean anything."

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24--The US Energy Department said Thursday it was preparing to release "a limited quantity" of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease shortages resulting from Hurricane Ivan, AFP reported.
The agency said in a statement it "intends to enter into negotiations to make available a limited quantity of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), to help relieve physical shortages of crude oil supplies in the Gulf of Mexico following recent hurricanes."
Officials suggested that any drawdown, which would come in response to specific requests from refineries, would be small in comparison to the drawdown of 35 million barrels from US inventories in recent months.
"I have authorized these negotiations in response to the physical disruption of offshore oil production and imports in the Gulf Region caused by Hurricane Ivan's destruction," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said.
"As this administration has stated consistently, the SPR was designed to protect American consumers against supply disruptions, including natural disasters."
The news came as oil futures neared all-time record levels, pinching US consumers less than six weeks before the November 2 US presidential election.
Crude oil traders shrugged off the news, and pushed prices higher after an initial drop in early trade after the White House confirmed that talks were underway.
The New York Mercantile Exchange contract for November delivery gained 11 cents to 48.46 dollars a barrel at the close. In London, Brent oil futures closed at 45.13 dollars, up 20 cents.
The Energy Department said the release would be similar to action taken in October 2002, in the wake of Hurricane Lili.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said that he urged the White House as far back as March to stop filling the strategic reserve as prices climbed.
Some Democratic lawmakers have also called for the administration to release oil from the reserve to curb natural gas price volatility.

Sadakazu Tanigaki

TOKYO, Sept. 24--China's involvement in talks with the Group of Seven industrialized nations at a meeting next week will be beneficial and Japan wants a frank exchange of views with its powerful neighbor, AFP quoted the Japanese finance minister as saying Friday.
"The Chinese economy has grown rapidly and its influence over the world economy is becoming greater," Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said.
"Japan needs to use this opportunity to engage in frank exchanges of opinion," he told reporters without saying what topics Japan would be most interested in discussing with China.
Washington said Thursday Chinese representatives would join G7 finance ministers and central bankers at a dinner following the scheduled regular session on October 1.
The G7 nations are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. Some officials, notably from Japan, have said China should revamp its dollar-pegged currency the yuan before joining the G7.
Tanigaki said participants in the next G7 gathering would likely discuss the global economic outlook, including the impact of higher oil prices and problems faced by developing countries.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sept. 24--International donors have pledged $1.2 billion to fund the lion's share of Bosnia's medium-term development strategy, Prime Minister Adnan Terzic said Thursday, AFP reported.
"This conference has shown that we have partners willing to support (Bosnia's) development," he told journalists at the end of a two-day donors coordination meeting.
The funds will be provided through grants and loans for the implementation of the 1.5-billion-dollar plan, he said.
The meeting, co-chaired by the European Commission and the World Bank, brought together delegations from 42 countries and international financial organizations.
Bosnian authorities presented their recently adopted medium-term development strategy that focuses on reducing poverty and public spending simultaneously, while generating domestic and foreign investment.
A statement from the donors at the end of the meeting said the strategy formed an "appropriate basis" for further international support.
But it warned that the government would have to tighten its fiscal policy, and sequence regulatory reform to ensure the viability of utilities such as railways and energy. On paper, Bosnia's gross domestic product of $5.2 billion has tripled since the end of the country's 1992-95 war, according to the World Bank.
But some 20 percent of its population of around 4.1 million people still live below the poverty line and an additional 30 percent are at risk of slipping into poverty.