Beirut  - France is ready to send people to Lebanon to observe or to assist with the upcoming legislative elections planned for May 2009, said visiting French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Friday.

"France is ready, if Lebanon wishes, to provide technical support during the elections," Fillon said, speaking in Beirut to a group of French and Lebanese businessmen.

The French official stressed that the assistance could consist of helping organize the polls or providing observers as part of a European Union initiative.

Managua  - Nicaragua's capital Managua and 104 other cities and counties will be ruled by Sandinistas, according to official final election results in the disputed local elections held November 9.<

Bissau, Guinea-Bissau  - Guinea Bissau's former ruling party the PAIGC has won a parliamentary majority in elections seen as crucial for bringing stability to the tiny West African nation, an election monitoring official said Friday.

Javier Gutierrez, spokesperson for the European Union election monitoring mission that observed last Sunday's polls, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that provisional results showed the PAIGC scooped 67 seats out of an possible 100.

The previous coalition government fell apart in August when the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), which had 45 seats in parliament, abandoned a national stability pact.

London  - A security officer at the US embassy in London has been suspended from duty after writing a blog which questioned the foreign policy agenda of president-elect Barack Obama, London's Evening Standard newspaper reported Friday.

It said Joe Hubbard was employed by a British security firm hired to protect the embassy.

According to the Evening Standard, he wrote: "Obama has been praised by just about every anti-American dictator in the world."

"The real question of concern ... is what promises have Obama's camp given in return? Agents representing Obama have met with these leaders/groups and promised changes in US foreign policy," the entry said.

Madrid  - The Spanish government was Friday accused of not providing justice for victims of alleged human rights abuses during the 1936-39 civil war and the
1939-75 dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

The government rejected the charges, with Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega saying it would continue working to "repair the pain" of those who had not been able to "close the wounds" of the past.

However, Emilio Silva, president of an association exhuming remains of Franco's victims from mass graves, slammed Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for saying that the Franco era should "sink into oblivion."

Paris - The losing Socialist Party candidate in the 2007 French presidential election, Segolene Royal, will be standing later Friday in a run-off election to become party leader.

If she beats her opponent, Lille Mayor Martine Aubry, she will take a large step to securing her party's nomination to face President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election.

In 2007, Royal became the first French woman to make it to the second round of the presidential election, but she was soundly beaten by Sarkozy.

In Thursday's first round of balloting for the party leadership, the 55-year-old Royal garnered 43.1 per cent of the vote, compared to Aubry's 35.4 per cent and 22.8 per cent for European Parliament deputy Benoit Hamon.